


a game we're not playing

by screamlet



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, First Time, Goddess Tower (Fire Emblem), M/M, Male My Unit | Byleth, Pre-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:27:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25409896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/pseuds/screamlet
Summary: The professor was named Byleth. No one seemed to call himProfessor Byleth, justProfessor. Linhardt wasn’t exactly sure how that happened but he went along with it anyway. Byleth had chosen to align himself with Claude and the Golden Deer and Linhardt wasn’t sure how that had happened, either.
Relationships: Linhardt von Hevring/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 5
Kudos: 115





	a game we're not playing

At Garreg Mach, Linhardt’s daily routine involved meals, meeting with Professor Hanneman, and working on his research. He would work in the dining hall when the library closed, and he would work in his room when the dining hall closed. 

After leaving class, Linhardt would visit with Professor Hanneman to discuss any manner of tasks he could assist with in exchange for conversations and precious knowledge about Crests. Sometimes he would organize research notes or summarize the correspondence Hanneman received from all over Fódlan seeking or sharing new information on Crests. Sometimes Hanneman was short on time and Linhardt would have his reading directed to something in the library.

Linhardt had read most of the Crest research in the library within days of arriving, but he required guidance and context to piece it all together as well as new information to develop his knowledge. Linhardt wasn’t so arrogant as to think he knew it all about Crests; in fact, he knew enough to know that he knew so very little. He was impatient in discovering that the more he learned about Crests (or anything, really), the more he realized he didn’t know. 

“That’s a Crest I’ve never seen before,” Linhardt said when he stepped into Professor Hanneman’s office one afternoon. The Crest Analyzer had been activated and light shone through a partial representation of a Crest. Had he ever seen a broken Crest symbol like that? He didn't think he had. 

Hanneman, standing at his shelves, looked up from a book he was reading. “Yes. Yes it is. I took a sample from the new professor and this awaited me.”

“The new professor?”

“Yes,” Hanneman said, returning his attention to his book. “A mysterious Crest, an _unknown_ Crest, bestowed on a mercenary.”

“He was a _mercenary_?”

“Crests may manifest in anyone, regardless of birth.”

Linhardt scoffed because of _course_ he knew that. “Yes, it was more that—he’s teaching here? Why would—”

“The archbishop requested it, and so he will teach here. This mercenary may have much to teach us,” Hanneman continued. “If not information actually useful to his students, then at least through his Crest.”

Linhardt considered all of this for a moment, his eyes fixed on the image of the Crest in front of him.

“I think you’re under the impression that I care because he’s a commoner, that this mysterious and extremely rare Crest has manifested in someone who hasn’t been raised to worship the very idea of Crests and their power,” Linhardt said. “That’s not the case. I’ve just—never met a mercenary before.”

“Yes you have. Did you forget about Shamir?”

Linhardt winced internally. Yes, he might have.

“He seems quiet,” Hanneman continued. “Again, much like Shamir, I suppose. It took her a while to come out of her shell, in a manner of speaking. It must be a difficult life when so many people you encounter have a very immediate and active interest in killing you.”

Linhardt considered this, too, and nodded. He set his bag down on the small table in Hanneman’s office he had claimed for himself and cleared his throat. “So. What can I help with today? Also, can you explain to me whether there are elemental-specific aspects to the Crests of people who are born, say, near the ocean or sea? Should I look in the library under the economics of coastal cities or the natural ecology of bodies of water?”

*

The professor was named Byleth. No one seemed to call him _Professor Byleth_ , just _Professor_. Linhardt wasn’t exactly sure how that happened but he went along with it anyway. Byleth had chosen to align himself with Claude and the Golden Deer and Linhardt wasn’t sure how that had happened, either. 

Edelgard called him _my teacher_ , which was certainly a choice. Dorothea had called him _the dashing young professor_ , then blushed as she said it. That one stuck in Linhardt’s brain, probably due to the phrasing but he couldn't discount the effect of her blush, too. Linhardt had only seen part of his Crest in the analyzer; it didn’t occur to him until just then that he hadn’t seen the person the Crest belonged to and that, to learn more about the Crest’s powers, he would have to find this person and speak to them.

Once classes were over for the day (once he had roused himself from his desk in the back of the room where he was allowed to sleep as much as he liked without disturbing everyone else), Linhardt stood on the lawn outside their classroom, looking to either side, wondering how and where one might find a dashing young professor with a mysterious Crest.

At certain times of day, all roads led to the dining hall. A few of the students from the Golden Deer were gathered around someone Linhardt had never seen before. He did look like a mercenary, Linhardt supposed: dressed all in black except for a purple dagger at his waist (what) and designs painted along the shoulders and chest of his black tunic. And a cape? He supposed it _was_ the dinner hour. Maybe mercenaries had a dress code, too.

Linhardt had been standing by the window making his observations. He didn’t startle easily, but the professor turned around from speaking to the dining hall staff and looked directly at Linhardt. They stared at each other for a very long moment. Linhardt could feel his mouth opening, _gaping_ as if to speak, which would do no good when they were at least 10 feet apart. Once some of the other students had scattered, Linhardt gathered himself and approached. 

“Hello. I’m Linhardt von Hevring.”

“Hello. You were staring. Can I help you?”

Linhardt was still staring. Could he be helped? _Could he_?

“I work with Professor Hanneman,” he explained, finally. “Not—I’m also a student with the Black Eagles, of course, I don’t work with him. I would like to, one day, but that might be considered a job and not a post, and I’m to be a count one day so I can’t have a _job_ , but. A researcher. That would be nice, I think, if I could be a researcher and avoid a cabinet post all together and let everyone else handle the running of things while I work on what I please.”

He was babbling. He had _babbled_. However, the professor watched him carefully throughout his babbling, then nodded in response. 

“And what do you research?”

Linhardt was expecting a joke or something about whatever had just happened when he opened his mouth a moment before, but nothing came. Just a question.

“Crests,” Linhardt said. “Professor Hanneman told me you have a very rare one and I’d like to study more of you. It. The Crest. Please. Thank you.”

The professor barely blinked. It was disarming. Linhardt could feel sweat beginning to prickle at his hairline. He had a habit of pushing his cursed straight hair over one ear when he was nervous; his parents never failed to mention how _much_ they hated this habit, which made him more nervous. He very, very much wanted to push his hair over his ear, if only for something to do under this piercing stare. He stood strong, though, and waited for an answer. 

“I’ve offered enough blood already, but thank you for asking so politely. If you’ll excuse me.”

“This doesn’t involve blood at _all_!” Linhardt said. “The blood is just for the initial analyzer. I believe nearly everyone in Fódlan is tested at birth, particularly the nobility, and the rest of the work is done through measurements of strength, magic, researching talents and weaknesses—”

The professor walked away. Linhardt was _mid sentence_ and the professor walked away. He was on the verge of being offended and, truth be told, a little hurt. He knew he was too much, people did tell him so very often, but they were often much politer, if not kinder, than just leaving a conversation like that. 

Linhardt glanced up from his shoes because the professor returned.

“Sit and have dinner with me,” he said. “I asked the staff if anyone knew your favorite dish and they’ll have it out with mine.”

“Oh,” Linhardt said. “I—typically I sit alone and read while I eat. I’m not much for conversation or social dinners with people. Or lunches. I always miss breakfast, breakfast is served _far_ too early. Anyway, it isn’t that I don’t like people, but there’s so much to read. Surely you understand. Do you understand? Do you read much as a mercenary? Do you take books with you from job to job? Do you have an office here?”

“I think you had better sit down and have a meal with me, and read your book.”

“Is that truly sharing a meal?” Linhardt asked. “I read and eat my book—sorry, I mean eat and read my book, please don’t laugh at me, I know I can be ridiculous when I’m interested in something and—”

“Yes, it counts as sharing a meal,” the professor said. “I enjoy a quiet meal, too.”

“Have I been talking too much? I don’t have to eat with you. I can take my plate and sit somewhere else. I’m not a bother. Fine, I’m not _always_ a bother. I know how to not be a bother.”

The professor frowned a little and gently took his elbow, leading him to an empty area of the long dining room table nearest to them. “No, I think—you sit there. Take out your book. Read your book. Food will arrive. We will eat food. I'll review my notes from teaching today. We'll finish our meal and then we will go our separate ways.”

Linhardt was no stranger to meals eaten in silence. His mother insisted on polite small talk during their meals at home. He had to practice small talk, she said, for when he had to ingratiate himself with the nobility he would work with when he assumed his father’s post. It was rude to discuss politics and the minutiae of work at the dinner table (a pointed look to his father, there), so they had to take every opportunity at meal time to make pleasant small talk. 

Silence at the dinner table was a clear failure on all their parts.

“I’ll try,” Linhardt said slowly. “But I’m very interested in Crests at the moment, so if you want to discuss that—”

The professor shook his head. 

It was still confusing for Linhardt, who found it even more confusing when the professor pulled out a chair and waited for Linhardt to sit. He pulled out a chair _for_ Linhardt. 

Linhardt sat down and then watched the professor take the long way around the dining room table to the seat across from him. Linhardt’s babbling had taken long enough that their plates arrived shortly after they sat down, once Linhardt had found his place in his book and the professor had discovered where he left off in his notes. Linhardt opened a roll to butter, then leaned in towards the professor.

“Are you sure you don’t want to make small talk? I feel so guilty about sitting in silence.”

“Do you want to make small talk?” the professor asked.

“No,” Linhardt said, almost in a whisper. “I hate small talk. I’m terrible at it, but I’ve always been told it’s rude to eat without at least an attempt at politeness.”

“I don’t think it’s rude. You're asking me what I want.”

Linhardt nodded, wide-eyed, then remembered to speak. “Okay. Then I’ll read, and so will you.”

“And eat,” the professor said, pointing with his fork at Linhardt’s plate. That was rude, too, but Linhardt was charmed by it, as he was charmed by eating a meal with someone and _not_ having the obligation of talking to them. “The reason why we’re here.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” 

Linhardt began eating and turned to his book. He glanced up for a second and saw the professor looking at him. They both returned to their respective occupations, a book and a stack of scribbled notes, and the silence was… relaxing. It relaxed him as few other things did. It was nice, Linhardt thought, to enjoy it while it lasted. 

*

Linhardt was sneaking away from a riding lesson when he slammed into Byleth and fell directly on his ass. 

“Are you stone?” Linhardt asked, accepting the hand Byleth offered to help him up. “I walked into you and you didn’t move. Like a _wall_.” He rubbed at his sternum and then caught the slightest _something_ at the corner of Byleth’s mouth. “Are you laughing at me?”

Byleth considered the question, then motioned over Linhardt’s shoulder. “Your horse is waiting.”

“It’s not my horse,” Linhardt said firmly. “Our professor is trying to make me more comfortable on a horse. All gentlemen ride horses, of course, so it should come naturally to me. Did I mention it’ll be much easier for me to curse enemies from a distance when I’m on horseback? And if I’m riding, enemies will aim for the horse, not for me, because that’s a wonderful development after earning a creature’s trust.” 

“That’s not true,” Byleth said. “You always aim for the rider. The horse is far more useful.” 

Linhardt stared at him, then brushed the dust off his robes. “Thank you for your help, Professor,” he said, and then continued his brisk walk away from the stables. 

There was nowhere to go but his room—professors and soldiers lurked in every corner of the monastery during tutoring hours. Linhardt could get some distance with a purposeful walk, but eventually he would be stopped and questioned as to why he wasn’t doing something useful. Really, he just needed to get to his room and hide until someone woke him for dinner. 

On his way to his room, he saw the doors to Bernadetta’s room. They were firmly shut, as always, and he very much respected her privacy as well as her devotion to speaking to as few human beings as possible. Linhardt considered things for a moment and then knocked on her door.

“Bernadetta, it’s Linhardt,” he called through the door. “I want to hide in your room and complain about things.” 

Linhardt had walked by Bernadetta’s room often enough to hear people begging and pleading with her to open the door or come out, and heard her _Go away! No one’s here!_ often enough. He was surprised when the lock clicked. He let himself in and firmly shut the door behind him. 

Bernadetta settled again on her bed, a sketchbook open in front of her. “You have until I’m finished shading in this flower to speak.”

“Byleth—”

“Who?”

“The _professor_.”

Bernadetta looked up, her eyes in a wild panic. “Is he here?”

“No, just me.”

“Is he outside? Did you bring him here? Are the two of you going to tear me out of my room and force me to _be outside_? LINHARDT, I’LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU.”

Linhardt held his hands up and shook his head. “It’s just me. You know that I greatly admire your commitment to agoraphobia.”

“JUST TALK AND GET OUT.”

She startled Linhardt enough that he spit out: “I bumped into him while escaping from a riding lesson and I told him I didn’t like riding horses into battle because bandits would kill the horse and he said _I_ would die because the horses mattered more than me.”

“He _said that_?”

“He didn’t say me, specifically, but when I was speaking about—”

“HE’S GOING TO KILL US.”

“Not directly, I think, but if we consider him as part of the machine of war that begets violence every day—”

“GET OUT,” Bernadetta screamed. “You’re going to give me NIGHTMARES. I’m NEVER going to class again!”

“Well, good, neither am I,” Linhardt decided. “I’ll just stay here—”

“I SAID GET OUT.”

“You did,” Linhardt agreed, and he dashed out of her room before she felt compelled to shoot a drawing pencil at his face. 

Again. 

It had been a very long year.

*

Saturday saw him back at the stables because come hell or high water, he was going to bond with these horses or his professor would die trying. 

“Stop brushing her so roughly,” Ferdinand interrupted. “Do you treat all women like that?”

Linhardt stared at Ferdinand before he said, “She’s a _horse_.”

“You can’t brush the horses anymore. Go get water for the trough.”

“Since when are you the manager of our group work?”

Ferdinand was already speaking to the horse in earnest, pointedly ignoring Linhardt. “It’s all right, darling. _I_ appreciate you.”

“Fuck _off_ ,” Linhardt whispered under his breath as he gladly left the stables with a couple of buckets. 

As he was lowering one of the buckets into the nearest well, he saw Byleth walking towards him. He was with Marianne, one of the mages with the Golden Deer. She seemed to be speaking, but he couldn’t be sure since she had surely never spoken to him or anyone else in the Black Eagles. It was a shame, too, as he had heard she had a fascinating story behind her Crest but she refused to speak to him about it. 

Byleth saw him and nodded in acknowledgment. Marianne stopped short, realizing she was speaking in front of someone not in her house, and apologized. 

“Marianne, do you want to discuss horses with Linhardt?” Byleth asked.

“What?” Marianne asked.

“What?” Linhardt asked.

Byleth looked at Marianne. “I caught him escaping from an hour at the stables the other day.”

She gasped. Linhardt was so _tired_.

“Horses are too big and they don’t like me,” Linhardt said. “But my professor feels similarly to you, _Byleth_ , so I’m here fetching them drinking water.”

“Oh, let me help,” Marianne interrupted. 

“That would be _wonderful_ ,” Linhardt said. 

Byleth raised his hands between them. “No, it’s—no? Marianne, it’s his assignment.”

“But he doesn’t want to be here and I do,” Marianne explained. 

“But—”

“Professor,” Linhardt began. He was beginning to develop a very specific tone for saying the word, addressing Byleth, one that made _something_ click in Byleth’s face. When Linhardt said _Professor_ in that tone (he thought he sounded coy and teasing, but maybe he was just nasal), Linhardt could see a change in Byleth’s expression, the way all of Byleth tensed at once. It was the same feeling Linhardt had when Byleth initiated something—like he was off-balance, disarmed, very much at a disadvantage in a game he hadn’t been playing. 

“Professor, how could you deprive Marianne like this? She may not need or even want people, but the horses _need her_.”

Marianne was not of the Black Eagles, any of whom would have soundly lashed out at Linhardt in their own particular way, as they always did. It was their way and, like it or not, Linhardt had become used to it. Not Marianne. 

Marianne’s entire body recoiled and, though she still stood there, she seemed to disappear in front of him.

“If you’ll both excuse me,” she whispered, and then she ran off.

Byleth watched her go, then looked at Linhardt.

“What?” Linhardt asked. “You started it.”

“I was hoping the two of you could connect over something.”

“Connect over how much she loves horses and how much I don’t?”

Byleth opened his mouth, too embarrassed to speak; Linhardt found it refreshing, watching someone else put their foot into it for once.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

The two of them stood there in silence. Well. Sort of. Linhardt returned to exerting the little energy and muscle he had into bringing up a full bucket of water from the well, which was much more effort than he remembered from the last time he had been forced into stable duty. 

“Here, let me help,” Byleth said.

“What a fabulous idea,” Linhardt sighed. He immediately let go of the handle and sent the bucket back to the bottom of the well. “Thank you for your help, Professor!”

“Linhardt!”

Linhardt speedily walked away, passing by the open stable to yell at Ferdinand, “Byleth volunteered to take my place so take care!”

He could hear Ferdinand sticking his violently orange head of hair out the stable door like one of the horses he loved so much. “Who the hell is Byleth?” Ferdinand called after him.

Linhardt called back, “The professor!” before he broke into an earnest sprint back to his room. It would be worth it, he thought, when he could lock the door and collapse into bed for the rest of the day.

*

Beautiful Sundays were terrible. Everyone was out of their rooms, posing everywhere in their various groups, discussing the tedium of the week with their classmates, catching up with professors they hadn’t had a chance to train with all week—

Everyone loved the fishing pond. _His_ fishing pond. Linhardt had long given up getting a spot on the pier on Sundays, but that day held hope. 

It was on his mission one fine Sunday that he ran into Byleth again, this time outside the greenhouse. 

“Are you here to yell at me again about horses?” Linhardt asked. 

Byleth stared at him. Linhardt looked down between them and saw that the professor was holding a tray with several small pots of dirt, each one with a flower in the center. 

“Here,” Byleth said, holding one of them out. “The greenhouse keeper tells me it’s a violet.”

“Oh,” Linhardt said. “Thank… you…?”

Byleth watched him for a moment, then picked up another pot and shoved it at him. “What about a rose? The greenhouse keeper told me they can be grown in many different colors but this is red. Obviously. You can see it’s a red rose. Can’t you?”

“Do you like plants?” Linhardt asked. “Why do you have so many _plants_?”

“I—” Byleth opened his mouth to speak, but it took the words a moment to come. “I don’t know. When I arrived here and I had free time, I went to the greenhouse and the greenhouse keeper asked if I wanted to garden. I told them I had never gardened before, but I would like to garden. We gardened and used magic and now I have—” 

Byleth looked down at his tray again and offered Linhardt another small flower. “A carnation? Do you like that?”

“I don’t know,” Linhardt stammered. “You should take these back.”

“No, no, they’re gifts, I have so many, I—”

Linhardt sneezed. The tiny pot with a perfect tiny rose fell to the ground and spilled dirt everywhere. Linhardt stared in horror, then saw his horror mirrored in Byleth’s face. 

Then Linhardt realized there was _snot_ on his face.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Linhardt muttered. “I don’t have a handkerchief, my mother and father were right, I’m a _disgrace_ —”

Byleth was balancing the tray of plants carefully as he procured a cloth from... somewhere. Somewhere on his person. A nondescript, random, clean-looking dark-colored cloth that he was holding out to Linhardt. 

“It’s not a real gentleman’s handkerchief,” Byleth said, rather obviously.

“No, it’s—”

So many things were happening in Linhardt’s chest. Something felt tight as he held the two remaining plant gifts against his chest and he thought about wiping his nose on one of his sleeves like a child. His throat welled up with _something_ at the prospect of the new professor mercenary seeing him with snot all over his face, after he had scolded him about the stables and teasing a classmate, holding out a _rag_ from his person that Linhardt could use as a handkerchief. Linhardt was about to finish his sentence ( _No, I couldn’t, it’s nothing, really!_ ) when he sneezed.

Then he sneezed again. And again. And again. And again. And—

“Plants are not for you,” Byleth said quickly, taking the two small pots from him. He shoved the rag-not-handkerchief into Linhardt’s hand and put the tray down on the ground, away from Linhardt and also random passersby who might step on them. 

“It’s nothing,” Linhardt said miserably, five more sneezes later. “Is there blood on this?”

“What?” Byleth asked. “It’s clean. Linhardt, why would there be blood on it?”

Linhardt was furious that Byleth, _the professor_ , could be so obtuse. 

“This time last month you were murdering bandits! You were just a mercenary who killed people! Now you’re giving me plants and a rag that passes for a handkerchief in your circles?”

If Linhardt had literally stabbed Byleth with the sword he never used, Byleth would have looked less shocked. Linhardt had dropped the tiny rose again. Like, emotionally.

“I’m sorry,” Byleth said. “I—this was the wrong thing. Excuse me.”

Byleth picked up the tray of small plants and walked away in a hurry. Linhardt wiped his nose some more on the makeshift handkerchief and watched from the corner of his eye as one of the wonderful, charming, fun Golden Deer students approached their professor and engaged him in conversation. It was Ignatz, one of the two dozen deeply introverted and shy people who had been sent to a monastery for Reasons. Linhardt watched them talk earnestly for a moment. Byleth held one of the small pots out to Ignatz, who happily accepted it, his face lighting up as he cradled the flower in his hands. 

Linhardt looked at the ground and the remnants of his gift. What a dick. 

When Linhardt’s sneezing was under control and Ignatz had wandered off to commune with his new best friend ( _a plant_ ), Linhardt made his way to Byleth. Byleth looked shocked to see him again and took a step back, guarding the plants from Linhardt with his other arm around the tray. Linhardt shook his head and covered his face with the rag-kerchief before he spoke.

“I’m very sorry,” Linhardt said. “I should stick to talking about Crests. Any time I try to do anything else, everyone is terribly disappointed—myself included. ”

“No, it’s all right,” Byleth said. “I thought you might like a flower. I apologized to Marianne, too, for the other day. I shouldn’t have interfered. I—”

Linhardt watched Byleth’s face, the way that he spent several long seconds looking around, looking within himself, trying to assemble something without instructions. 

“I like to help,” Byleth finally said. 

“You do?” Linhardt said. 

Byleth nodded. “And I like to garden. I think I do. I like this greenhouse. I like to garden here. I like my students. I like how hard they try, not just at their studies but at—well. At me. Like they know I don’t—”

Byleth looked lost again. He looked so, so young. Linhardt couldn’t stop staring. Byleth stared at him, too, then seemed to find words again. “You can keep that,” he said, motioning to the rag Linhardt still had against his face.

“Okay. Uh. I’ll clean it and return it. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of your prized handkerchief.”

Linhardt could _kick_ himself, his mouth was so stupid and wrong. He wished they were having this conversation at the stables so a horse could kick Linhardt in the teeth and put them all out of this misery.

“That sounds like something Lorenz would say,” Byleth said. “He values handkerchiefs very much. Maybe he can give me advice on nicer ones.”

Byleth sounded almost fond of Lorenz, the most pompous noble in this catastrophic nightmare of pompous nobles. Linhardt suddenly hated Lorenz with a fury he had never felt before in his life. 

“No, don’t take Lorenz’s advice,” Linhardt said. “This rag-as-handkerchief is _very_ you.”

Linhardt didn’t know if that was the right or wrong thing to say. Neither did Byleth, it seemed, since his expression didn’t change. He nodded shortly and left again, taking the steps up to the dining hall two at a time. Byleth met another student at the top of the landing and engaged them in conversation, too. Why did he do that? _How_ did he do that?

“Lin?” 

Linhardt turned around and bumped into Dorothea. 

“Why are you standing here with an old rag to your face?” she asked kindly. 

“The professor tried to give me three flowers and I sneezed. A lot. I sneezed a lot.” Linhardt felt himself pout, a little. "I'm not allergic to plants. Why did my nose choose that moment to disgrace me?"

Her eyebrows shot up. “Three flowers? He only gave me one.”

The fucking _horror_ would never _end_. 

*

“Don’t worry, Lin, I’ll protect you,” Caspar said, adjusting his grip on the truly monstrous axe he had taken to wielding lately. 

“You better, or no one else will heal you,” Linhardt replied.

“I’ve gotta get hurt first for you to heal me, and no one's quick enough to catch me. You'll see!” Caspar laughed.

“Why am I even here?” Linhardt wondered loudly. “I’m the third best mage in a house of three mages.”

The Black Eagles’ professor informed Linhardt that this was exactly the opportunity for him to find his strengths—whether he wanted to practice white magic and healing, or perhaps try his hand at offensive maneuvers using black magic.

“I want the specialty where I don’t torture human beings with magic,” Linhardt said. “If I could start with not-torturing my classmates, that would be wonderful.” 

“You kinda want to punch Lorenz in the face, though,” Caspar said. “Come on. We all do.”

“No, Ignatz is the punchable one,” Linhardt muttered, remembering that Sunday and the way his face lit up beneath his hideous glasses because he could accept a plant without killing it. Good for _Ignatz_.

Edelgard announced, rather haughtily, “That haircut has wronged me, personally.”

“Agreed,” Caspar said. “Also, he can’t shoot for shit. I was scouting him the other day.”

“Isn’t that cheating?” Linhardt asked.

Hubert turned his head, briefly pulled out of his own ass for the conversation. “You didn’t scout your enemy?”

“Marianne?” Linhardt asked. “Make eye contact for more than three seconds and she’ll burst into tears. What do you think I’m going to do to her?”

“At _least_ tell me you looked into Mercedes,” Hubert said.

Linhardt squinted a little across the field at the Blue Lions. “Is she… which blonde one is she?”

Caspar stared at him and pointed vaguely across the field. “The one over there who is going to shoot you in the fucking face with an arrow.”

“I thought she was a healer like I am,” Linhardt said. “Why is she an archer, too?”

“Because some people can handle more than one complex specialty at a time, Linhardt, and prefer to make something of their lives,” Hubert replied. “You should consider the same.”

Edelgard looked over at them and raised her eyebrows. “Linhardt, why don’t you have a shield?”

“We have _shields_? Where was I supposed to get a shield?” 

Edelgard glared at him and then looked at Hubert.

“If you ever fall asleep in class again, I will personally murder you,” Hubert said.

“I only fall asleep in class as a defense mechanism against your voice,” Linhardt replied.

“Look, the battle's starting,” Caspar said loudly. “Fuck yeah! Let’s beat the shit out of each other! Lin, watch my back!”

“You said you were watching mine!” Linhardt pleaded. “Fine. _Fine_. Let’s _go_.”

Linhardt watched in horror as Mercedes moved a few feet, notched an arrow, and immediately took out Marianne. He definitely knew which one Mercedes was now—the one staring directly at him across the field, a _very_ large supply of arrows at her command. 

In the end, he didn’t “die.” To Hubert’s chagrin it was Linhardt following in their wake, furiously healing them from every mild-to-severe hit, that managed to keep them in the running long enough to reach Professor Hanneman and his secured spot on the staircase. 

“Linhardt, use your wind spell,” Caspar said. “Weaken him and then I’ll take him out at the knees.”

It was the end of the battle and Edelgard, Hubert, Caspar, and the Black Eagles’ professor had taken out everyone else in the other houses. They had made it this far and Linhardt hadn’t used a single offensive spell. He would have been proud of himself if the defensive healing nonsense hadn’t been so much _work_.

“Fine,” Linhardt said, gritting his teeth as energy, so much _energy_ , gathered inside him. Gales of wind and light exploded from his hands and sliced Professor Hanneman, his fellow Crest freak _Hanneman_ , deeply across the face, across his clothes, pushing him off the staircase and causing him to “die” as well. 

“Holy shit,” Caspar said. 

“More of that, Lin, more of _that_!” Edelgard yelled. “We won!”

“Thank you for lifting that one heavy finger to keep us alive,” Hubert said. 

Their professor was very proud, though noted that Linhardt could have done more damage rushing at Hanneman on horseback. He nodded silently—proud that he had won something, proud when they returned to Dorotha, Bernadetta, Ferdinand, and Petra and they were so _proud_ of that killing blow—

Their house took the celebration to their classroom, cheering and drinking in their room of red banners. Linhardt took his drink and slipped outside, leaning against the wall just outside the door. He closed his eyes, then opened them quickly because he was at an officers’ academy with people who were very excited to use magic and weapons to hurt each other. He took a long sip of his drink since Ferdinand claimed his mother referred to alcohol as "her little rest cure" to calm her nerves.

Any moment now the alcohol would calm his nerves. Ferdinand, however, would always be a fucking idiot.

“Linhardt,” a voice called out gently. Linhardt looked around and saw, of course, _Byleth_ , emerging from the shadows of one of the walkways between buildings. 

“Yes, Professor?” Linhardt asked. He felt like he had to use the title with some defiance, as if he wasn’t allowed to drink at school after winning a big mock battle like that. 

“Good healing,” Byleth said. 

“What?” Linhardt asked. “Good healing?”

“They couldn’t have done it without you,” Byleth said, motioning to the party just over Linhardt’s shoulder. “You have a good eye for seeing who needed what the most. Other people would have prioritized Edelgard, hoping she could carry the weight of losing one of the others.”

“We shouldn’t have had two mages and two axe users. It doesn’t make sense. Our professor is an idiot.”

“Don’t say that. We all make mistakes.”

Linhardt nodded, mumbled some sort of apology even though his professor wasn’t even there. 

“The horse isn’t a bad idea, though,” Byleth said.

“Yes it _is_ ,” Linhardt moaned, but Byleth had already left. 

Fuck him.

*

Classes were terrible. His classmates _expected_ things from him now, asking him to contribute insights on battle magic and _whatever_. Stable duty became more urgent, as did offensive magic, because clearly there was something there! Never mind that Hubert was dressing for the role of Lead Dark Bishop since day one at the academy, with the sadism and toadying to match. 

Edelgard and Hubert went so far as to hold an intervention for Linhardt when individual conversations with him didn’t seem to do the trick.

“You’re wasting your talent and your imagination,” Edelgard said in a manner that was actually gentle. Kind, even. 

“And our _time_ ,” Hubert added.

Linhardt nodded thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s the point. I am wasting your time by making the most of _my_ time, in the best ways I can imagine, doing exactly what I want and nothing else.”

“You’re selfish and stupid,” Hubert said. “An aggressive caterpillar could topple your house without a second thought.”

Linhardt found himself staring at people a lot, trying to process what they were saying because it—it was all so _stupid_. Why was everyone _like this_.

“Yes, and I would let the caterpillar do it since it seems to care so much more than I do. Perhaps the caterpillar would keep me on as a librarian,” Linhardt said. He gathered his things and left, making his way… somewhere. Anywhere. It was still light out, so why not the marketplace? 

Of course, there was Byleth talking to the gatekeeper outside the entrance hall, the chatty one who liked to wish everyone good morning, good day, and good evening, doing very little gatekeeping and rather a lot of gossiping. Linhardt had already run so far from Edelgard and Hubert, from his classroom and the Black Eagles and his _home_ and his _parents_ and—

“Good day, Linhardt!” the gatekeeper called out. Byleth looked up and waved as well. He seemed alert, his eyes scanning Linhardt as if looking for something. Linhardt pushed some of his hair over one ear and made his way over. Did Byleth find him wanting? Of course he did; what was Linhardt if not a person in want of solutions and remedies to his entire existence?

“Hello,” Linhardt said. 

“Are you having a good day?” asked the gatekeeper. 

Linhardt used his mouth to reply with audible words, while the rest of him said: _No. No, I’m not. No. Your cheery voice stabs into my brain. Your joy makes me want to die. Actually, every moment of being here makes me want to die, and if the wilderness wasn’t so terrifying and lacking in beds, I would be there right now. Instead, I am soft and I am bad at magic and I am a disgrace of a noble and I am too interested in all the wrong things and I am here and I feel bad, all the time, except when I’m sleeping. How are you, gatekeeper?_

Linhardt felt something pressed into his hand and looked down at the icing on the edge of a baked pastry poking out of a napkin. He looked at Byleth and could have cried right there on the spot, pressed his face to his broad shoulder and cried on his black tunic and his black cape, an extremely Hubert sort of look except Byleth didn’t call him a stupid disgrace _all the fucking time_. 

The gatekeeper continued to chatter, mentioning something about a good weekend for fishing with rare fish in the pond. Linhardt looked at the pastry in his hand and said something in affirmation. He earned a smile and a nod from the gatekeeper, who saw someone else coming up the stairs and engaged them in conversation next. 

“You like fishing?” 

Linhardt looked up from the pastry at Byleth. “Yes,” Linhardt said. “It’s very quiet. Relaxing. It’s hard to do on Sundays, since the pond is so crowded. I thought the sound of so many people would drive the fish away, but they want to be caught and cooked into our lunches, I suppose. How anyone manages to fish on Sundays is a mystery to me.”

“Focus. Concentration. Live bait. The usual.” 

Linhardt tried not to crack a smile, but he failed at that, too. 

“I was just heading to dinner,” Byleth said, motioning to the dining room entrance within the entrance hall. “A few of my students will join, too, if you wanted to get to know them.”

Linhardt laughed a little and shook his head. “No, I don’t want that at all.” He paused for a moment and took a breath. “No, I’ve had it with people today, but thank you. Thank you for—” He held up the treat, then turned on his heel and quickly walked away again. 

The library. The library was quiet around dinner time. Tomas would find him new, rare books, slightly forbidden ones, and let him eat in the library, devouring all the wonderful things about Crests the archbishop and the Church didn’t want him to know. Tomas would ask him thoughtful, intriguing questions that would spark Linhardt’s curiosity. Linhardt would return to his room and stay up late into the night with his books and notes, slipping deeper into the world of Crests and perhaps, eventually, sleep. A perfect antidote to a perfectly wretched day.

*

“Why are we taking on bandits?” Linhardt asked. “Aren’t there knights for this? What if a bandit kills one of you?”

“You will heal us enough to return to camp and be fully healed,” Petra said. “But this will not be me.” 

“I believe you,” Linhardt lied. 

All things considered, it was an assignment both dangerous and tedious. The bandits were, very earnestly, trying to hurt them! Linhardt _had_ to heal his classmates; he _had_ to set some of the bandits on fire and buy the others time to swing a sword or an axe and drive them off. It was somehow a relief when nearly all the bandits had been hurt and maimed, retreating to their own camp and leaving the Black Eagles and their professor to handle the leader of the bandits, the last one standing. 

At least, the bandits left them at the foot of the miniature stronghold with their boss, all the students arguing about who would finish him off.

“I’m… right here,” said the leader of the bandits. “I’m going to kill one of you, maybe all of you if you keep talking shit.”

“We heard you,” Hubert said before he turned back to the rest of the class. “It pains me to say this, but Linhardt needs the experience. Actually, it doesn’t pain me at all because it’s the truth: he is the weight bringing us all down and this would lift him up.”

“Hubert, please,” their professor said lightly, because that was the closest to a reprimand on the subject of _murder_ that had Linhardt heard within the Black Eagles. 

Linhardt glanced at the leader of the bandits, who was staring at Hubert in absolute horror. 

“You rich kids are fucked up,” the bandit said. 

“No, I'm not—well, I am rich, but—” Linhardt shook his head then looked at Hubert. “No, I’m all out of magic, I couldn’t cast another spell if your life depended on it. _My_ life depends on it.”

“Use your sword, then,” Ferdinand said. 

Linhardt looked around and remembered he did have a training sword at his side. 

“Please, someone else do it,” Linhardt pleaded. “I don’t _like_ this. I want to go back.”

The leader of the bandits called out over Edelgard’s head: “Kid, if you ever want a life as a bandit healer—”

“Oh? Do you attack people less than we do? Could I avoid all physical violence? Would I have to keep long hours? What's your bed situation like?”

“Linhardt!” their professor scolded. 

Suddenly there was a burst of magic from the side; the leader of the bandits and his job offer was gone. Dorothea rose proudly from her crouching position and glared at the rest of them.

“You’re welcome,” she said. 

“ _Finally_ , let’s get out of here,” Linhardt sighed. 

“Coward carries the gold,” Petra informed him, handing over a sack they had liberated from a chest. 

“Why are you all like this?” Linhardt asked. “I hate this house.”

Caspar lingered behind the group with Linhardt, then took the sack of gold bars from him. He looked over his shoulder every so often because he was smart and wanted to make sure there weren’t any other bandits coming after them and the gold. He was smart and Linhardt was so _tired_ it hardly mattered if they made it back to the monastery. 

The Black Eagles’ professor held back as well and spent most of the walk back to their convoy discussing strategies for improving his motivation. What would help? What would make him better at learning offensive tactics? What would make him more engaged in battle? What would make him strong and better?

“I think it’s high time for you to accept that I am lazy and good for nothing,” Linhardt informed his professor. “I will take care of my classmates, particularly Caspar since he is my friend, but I don’t like killing for fun.”

“It’s killing for survival,” his professor informed him. “You will need to take life in order to keep your own.”

“That’s a horrible deal,” Linhardt said. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

“You did. You literally did by coming here.”

Well. They had him there. 

*

“We’re going to find you a battalion,” the Black Eagles’ professor announced one afternoon.

“What? No. I don’t want one.”

“We’re going to hire you a battalion because all your other classmates have battalions in their charge already,” his professor continued. “It will make you more responsible. You will be responsible for healing the members of your house and you will be responsible for making decisions to protect your battalion.”

“I don’t want this,” Linhardt said. 

There were battalions that rained down fire. There were battalions of pegasus riders who brutalized enemies (whose enemies, exactly?) with their wings and hooves and their riders’ weapons. There were battalions of huge warriors who would simply barrel into an opposing battalion and push them away so someone else, or Linhardt himself, could set their leader on fire, or burn them alive with light magic. There was a battalion for everything, it seemed. 

“I don’t want this at all,” Linhardt pleaded. 

Eventually, Linhardt and his professor found a group of monks who specialized in a type of spell that would support the people around Linhardt, blessing them with enough white magic to move extra distances towards enemy combatants.

“Moving the fight further from me?” Linhardt asked. “That’s perfect. If we must hire a battalion for me, hire this one.” He turned to the leader of the battalion and asked, “Can I ask why you do this? You’re monks. Why do you use your magic in battle like this? Why battle at all?”

To Linhardt’s surprise, the leader of the battalion looked at him very kindly. “Because there will always be those who want to take life and we must do what we can to stop that. We must do our best to help people live.”

An answer like that delivered with that much pity for him made Linhardt felt very young and naive, but he felt no less adamant in his conviction that he did not want this, any of this, at all. 

*

It was the first Sunday in so many weeks that the Black Eagles’ professor didn’t pull them into any kind of minor battle. He hadn’t rested or explored the monastery in weeks. It had been so long since Linhardt had a moment to himself either to take a stroll through one of the gardens, or think about fishing—really, think about or feel anything but the general panic regarding Flayn, who had just _disappeared_. Classes continued without her. Apparently she wasn’t a “real” student, only Seteth’s younger sister (secret daughter, perhaps, since she did seem very young). Linhardt had seen her practicing magic with some students, occasionally taking part in the sky patrols on a pegasus—she was a far better student than he was. Perhaps she would like his place in the Black Eagles and he could… not be a student. 

“You look exhausted. Beyond exhausted.” 

Byleth startled Linhardt out of his thoughts. Linhardt saw that Byleth’s eyes were scanning him from head to toe, as if he was taking mental inventory of Linhardt’s state. Perhaps he was. What then? What was Linhardt going to do about it? He certainly didn’t have the capacity to feel anything about it, not this fucking month. 

“Did you know you had been standing here on this path outside the garden for—well, longer than I’d like to admit I was watching.” 

“Had I?” Linhardt asked. “I suppose I had. I—”

“Are you worried about Flayn?”

Something in Linhardt deflated. He was and he wasn’t. He was too tired to be worried about Flayn. There were volunteer searches every single night. Caspar had volunteered himself and Linhardt for at least two of them; Linhardt had been so frustrated and tired he could cry. Why couldn’t _he_ disappear? Between the night searches and the classes and the skirmishes every free day, did his bed think he had died?

“Here. I thought this might cheer you up.”

Linhardt looked at Byleth and then looked at the thing that he had been handed. It was a tiny little bobber for fishing, shaped like a fish, colored like one of the shimmering fish Linhardt had been trying to catch in the pond for ages.

Byleth said, “It’s silly—”

“No it’s not silly, not at all,” Linhardt said quietly. “Thank you so much. I love it.” 

“Oh. Well, I’m glad.”

Linhardt didn’t look up. If he looked away from this fishing float and at the man who had handed it to him, he would actually cry. Instead he swallowed the thickness in his throat and said, “This is simply delightful.” 

“Would you have a meal with me? I believe the special today is rabbit skewers.”

That was disgusting enough for Linhardt to sniffle the tears away and shake his head, finally looking at Byleth. “You should find better food.”

Byleth didn’t smile, exactly, but his face did something that resembled amusement. He nodded and left Linhardt to return to his Sunday occupation of standing on a stone path outside one of the gardens, holding a tiny fishing float and wondering where his entire life had gone wrong. 

Eventually he sat down at the same spot, knees tucked up against his chest. He knew he should eat something but he was overwhelmed at the process: walking to the dining room, standing in line, declining the rabbit skewers, remembering what he liked to eat, finding a place to sit, avoiding people he wished to avoid, finally _having_ the food in front of him, picking up a fork and a knife and his drink and—

“You’re still here.”

Linhardt looked up. Byleth was back. 

“Did you eat yet?”

Linhardt stared some more, then pulled his knees closer to his chest and rested his forehead against them. “I’ll get to it eventually.”

Byleth hadn’t left, he knew that. Byleth moved much more silently than most people, but Linhardt could half open his eyes and see Byleth’s heavy black boots in front of his eyes. Linhardt noticed that Byleth couldn’t stop moving, always on his toes and the balls of his feet like he was ready to bolt at any second. In a moment, Byleth did—he leaned down and helped Linhardt up, a hand on his bicep and a sturdy arm around Linhardt’s waist.

“You’re having tea with me,” Byleth said firmly.

“Am I?” Linhardt said with no little amount of sarcasm. “I hope you have my _favorite_ tea, angelica tea, and my _favorite_ scones, and my _favorite_ tiny sandwiches, and—”

There was a tea… garden? They were in another garden, one that had to be near where Linhardt had unwittingly spent the day, but there was a modest little tea table in front of him with tiny porcelain settings. Byleth disappeared into the nearest building and reappeared quicker than Linhardt thought possible with everything they needed for tea, including a tiered porcelain cake stand loaded with tiny sandwiches and pastries. 

“It’s not angelica tea, but I’ll have that next time,” Byleth said as he poured Linhardt a cup. He said that very firmly, like he was declaring something a law. Like he would find a stash of angelica tea somewhere, or buy some from merchants who didn’t come to the monastery and didn’t bring angelica tea with them. What did it matter? Linhardt barely even tolerated tea. 

Byleth added a spoonful of sugar into Linhardt’s tea and pushed it at him. “Drink it.”

Linhardt looked at Byleth, feeling some sort of defiance on his face, but he picked up the cup and took a delicate tea party sip. 

Fuck, it was good. He had been thirsty. And hungry. He had been _starving_. He was so stupid. Linhardt polished off the cup of tea and pushed it towards Byleth for more. He grabbed a sandwich from the tiered platter and devoured it, then took a pastry and devoured that, too. There was another cup of tea in front of him and it took significant restraint to not pour it down his throat with everything else in his mouth. Linhardt _would_ be someone to nearly faint outside a garden and then eat so fast he choked and died at tea time with the professor. He tried to restrain himself, even if he couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with Byleth. Byleth probably looked concerned and worried. The thought made something in Linhardt cringe. 

“Did you see those children from the village playing in the courtyard?” Byleth asked. “They seemed to be playing tag, but they had divided themselves into the different houses here.”

“Children?” Linhardt asked. “What?”

“Okay, never mind,” Byleth said to himself. “Oh! I spoke to the gatekeeper. He said he’s been keeping very long hours.”

Byleth was making conversation—terribly at that. Linhardt sneered a little because he hated everything and everyone in the world except the tea sandwich he was cramming into his mouth. "Really? Knowing him, they were hours hardly spent working. More likely gossiping with anyone and everyone who walked by his post."

Byleth shot him a look and took a sip of his own tea. Linhardt took a sip, too, somehow already forgetting that his cup of tea was in front of him. He finished it off and Byleth poured him another cup because, apparently, they were drinking _all_ this fucking tea. 

“Have you found a good training partner yet?” Byleth asked. “Your professor mentioned you may take up the sword in addition to your magic. I could help with that.”

Linhardt didn’t hide his disgust. He looked away and then grabbed another small pastry to shove into his mouth. He was ready to leave. 

“Thank you for the tea,” Linhardt managed. 

“Take the rest of these,” Byleth said. 

“No, I—crumbs.” Linhardt took one last look at Byleth, took a final handful of small pastries, crammed another sandwich into his mouth, and skittered back to his room. What an absolute waste of a day. 

*

A day or so later, Byleth found Linhardt between classes. Or, rather, between waking up after class and making his way to Professor Hanneman’s office and the library. 

“Will you have a meal with me?” Byleth asked.

“No thank you,” Linhardt said. He had been so embarrassing that Sunday that he now made sure to spend every other free moment in the dining room, snacking or gathering snacks. One of the attendants had called him a squirrel hiding food for the winter, which was true if winter was anytime that he had been worked so hard that walking to the dining hall felt like the greatest hardship anyone had ever asked of him.

He was fine. School was wonderful. His family was so good to send him here. Truly he was learning so much about his place in the nobility. 

“Goodbye,” Linhardt said, because their conversation was over. 

“Wait,” Byleth said, because it wasn’t. 

Linhardt had already been several feet away in his rush, but he felt compelled to return to Byleth. Hadn’t he tried to be kind to Linhardt? Had Linhardt been so crazy as to almost cry over a fishing float? No, that didn’t sound like him, but it did sound like Byleth to find things and give them to his students like a crow sharing the favors of its nest. 

“My house is planning a small expedition into a suspicious part of the building in hopes of finding Flayn,” Byleth explained. “We have reason to think that she’s still at the monastery. Would you join us?”

“Why in the name of this entire cursed continent would I do that?” Linhardt asked. 

“Because we’ll need another healer to attend to her, if we find her,” Byleth said. “Marianne will keep an eye on the rest of the class, Lysithea can handle defensive and attack spells, and you and I will help Flayn.”

When Linhardt had first arrived at Garreg Mach, he had been intrigued at the ins and outs of this ancient monastery, especially when he heard a rumor about _real_ Crest stones hidden somewhere in the deepest parts of its underground tunnels. 

But this plan? Linhardt hated _every word_ of this plan, every moment of searching for a secret chamber under the monastery where a girl was possibly being held hostage and tortured, hated the thought of looking upon this very nice girl he knew as Flayn and trying to save her life after monsters had had a whole month to do to her as they pleased. He hated it, and yet he couldn’t shake the monk who led his battalion, the things they said in their house’s very frequent battles that would motivate Linhardt just the slightest bit more to get through one last round of battle, one last bout of Edelgard and Caspar hacking through bodies so they could just go _home_. 

“I want to help,” Linhardt finally said. “I’ll help you.”

Byleth nodded. He didn’t look pleased, exactly, which comforted Linhardt. No one should look pleased about the situation, not in the slightest. But it was something. He could do _something_. 

*

It was something so much worse than anything Linhardt could have imagined.

“What the fuck is this place?” Linhardt asked when he and the Golden Deer found themselves in a stone maze underneath the monastery. He had no idea where this could possibly fit in relation to the monastery. The walls were so high that none of them could see past their own small corridor, but there was clearly the shuffling of armor, weapons, and—

A voice, a horrible voice, one that spoke directly into Linhardt’s brain if not into the actual air of the chamber. 

_Are you prepared to battle me?_

“Okay, what was _that_?” Hilda asked. “I hate this. I want to go home.”

Hilda was Linhardt’s favorite person in the world. 

Byleth pressed himself against one of the walls and looked into whatever lay beyond. “At least two chambers, doors between each, the next is more narrow. Claude, Raphael, take everyone through the main chambers. Work your way through the center. Leonie and Linhardt, come with me.”

Byleth gave a few more encouraging words to Claude and the rest of the students. Everyone received a firm shoulder pat and a quiet, earnest: _Be mindful. I know you can do this_.

Byleth turned to him and Leonie, then walked over to the glowing tile in the corner.

“What the shit is that?” Linhardt asked.

“We’ll find out,” Byleth said as he unsheathed his sword, stepped on the tile, and disappeared. 

“Oh I hate this so much, so much, so unbelievably _much_ ,” Linhardt whined. 

Leonie reassured him, for what it was worth. “It’s all right. He was raised and trained by Captain Jeralt. He must be good for something. Stick behind me. We’ll clear out the threats and you cover our backs.” 

Par for the course, he supposed. 

Suddenly on one side, where the other Golden Deer students had disappeared, there was the scuffle of armor and bodies and weapons coming into contact with each other. There was yelling, so much _yelling_. 

“Nice one, Hilda!” Claude called out. 

“Ugh! They got _blood_ on me! This is the _worst_.”

From his other side, Linhardt heard some grunts and the clash of metal. Leonie listened for something, then stepped on the tile and disappeared. Linhardt took a breath and then he, too, took a step into the next chamber. 

The next several hours were, perhaps, worse than any skirmish or battle the Black Eagles had encountered to date, but Linhardt felt locked in. He, Byleth, and Leonie snaked their way through the chambers, taking down people one by one. He healed Leonie when a sword slashed at her side, healed Byleth when he went too many rounds with a knight in heavy armor—

Shit, that was an arrow in Linhardt’s own shoulder. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The other two had weapons. He was the healer. He wasn’t hurting anyone. 

Leonie reached for his shoulder and took out a small knife, quickly cutting away the wood of the arrow so that only a small piece and the arrowhead were still in Linhardt’s shoulder. As Leonie worked, Linhardt looked over her shoulder at Byleth, who was breathing hard and looked _furious_. Once Leonie turned and nodded at Byleth, once Linhardt had taken a quick-acting potion to heal himself, Byleth opened a door to enter the next room, yelled like a fury, and very audibly hacked someone to death in one stroke. 

“Oh boy,” Linhardt said, stupidly. 

He and Leonie followed into the room. Byleth was helpfully stacking two dead bodies in a corner, then led the rider’s horse out of the room, urging it down the winding corridor they had just used. Linhardt looked at the chamber they were in now, a half dozen more of those strange tiles that would take them to other parts of this nightmare maze. There was a huge lever in the center of the room.

“We should pull that,” Linhardt said. “They wouldn’t have put it back here with so many soldiers if it didn’t do something important.”

Byleth pulled the lever and the strange tiles in each stall activated. 

“Did you hear that?” Leonie asked. Linhardt did not because he could hear the yelling and clashing of weapons on the other side of the chamber. He could hear the occasional threat of _that voice_ , which had identified itself as The Death Knight when Ignatz (of course) had shot an arrow into the center chamber. Accidentally, he claimed, from what Linhardt could pick up while listening to his own terrified breathing. 

“There’s another lever,” Byleth said. “I heard it activate in the back. If this turns on the tiles, that must turn something off.”

Linhardt said, “I don’t think that’s how things work, but it sounds very quiet back there so let’s go.”

The three of them inspected all the tiles for a few moments, but there was no visible difference between them. Leonie volunteered and took a deep breath, stepping on a tile and disappearing.

“Second lever!” she cried out from the back chamber. Something else in the maze sounded like the power leaving it, though Linhardt couldn’t describe the sound more than that. Suddenly Leonie appeared in front of them on the tile she had just left. She went into the next stall and before Byleth could stop her, she waved and stepped on the new tile. 

Byleth and Linhardt stared at the empty tile and then each other in terror. It was only for a moment as her voice called out over the wall: “And here’s a _nice_ fucking chest! Ooh, some sort of fancy ring to go with my new fancy sword.”

“You don’t use swords!” Byleth yelled back. “Focus on one thing, Leonie! Reunite with the others!”

Leonie reappeared in front of them and then tried the other tile. From a long way off, Linhardt could hear, “Don’t use that one! It goes to the first chest!”

Linhardt took a deep breath and looked to Byleth for guidance as Leonie returned. Byleth was looking at the three remaining tiles, trying to piece together where they could go.

“Linhardt, the left one,” Byleth finally decided. “It should take you to the second room and that should be empty. You can join them in the back and take out any straggling soldiers, heal anyone who stayed behind.”

Linhardt nodded firmly, did as he was told, and arrived in a _very_ narrow chamber where Raphael had just punched a mage’s face into their skull. Raphael turned around and his face lit up when he saw Linhardt. “Hey there!” his voice boomed as the rest of him bled and looked to be already bruising. 

“Linhardt!” another voice called out. There was a mage right next to him, hand up and ready to blast Linhardt away until a lance erupted through the mage’s chest. Linhardt looked up in horror to see Lorenz on his horse, forcefully tearing his lance from the mage’s chest. “Would you give me a hand with this?” Lorenz asked. 

“Ah, you look pretty green, don’t worry about it,” Raphael said as he inserted himself between Linhardt and the dead mage. Linhardt closed his eyes and tried not to listen to the sound of metal being torn through meat. “And I don’t mean just your hair! You’re good, come on, let’s finish these—dammit!” 

Linhardt opened his eyes, stepped over the dead mage, and saw Lysithea kneeling and gasping from a deep axe wound. He rushed over and healed her. He wondered if he should say some encouraging words to keep her spirit up, but he had no time. As soon as she was healed, Lysithea pushed Linhardt behind her, stood up, and blasted black and purple magic at the heavily armored knight in the corner. The knight screamed and the solid block of metal fell over. 

Hilda turned around with her bloody axe and offered Lysithea a high-five. “Thanks! It felt like I had been trying to cut off his arm for _hours_.”

“Sometimes you just need a good mage to vaporize someone!” Raphael laughed. 

He looked over his shoulder at Linhardt and held out a hand to help him up. “You good? I think we’re done with the vaporizing part. Lysithea’s got that down anyway. Claude could use a heal, though—he took a pretty bad arrow to—hey! You took an arrow, too! Look at that!” 

“Raphael, could you stop announcing our injuries to the people we’re trying to kill!” Claude called out. Linhardt saw an arrow fly over a wall and heard someone groan and fall in response. In another moment, Claude was at Linhardt’s side and holding up his arms. “He’s right, though, I’ve got this gash and it’s messing up my aim.”

Linhardt nodded, healed where he was told, and received a grateful smile from Claude before he ran back to the (hopefully) final room of this nightmare. Linhardt had exactly one second to appreciate that before there were footsteps behind him. He turned, arms straight, hands loaded with magic, but he saw it was Byleth.

“I’m so sorry,” Byleth said. “I thought it would take you to the empty chamber, I didn’t—”

“It’s fine, go,” Linhardt said, making room in the narrow doorway for Byleth to join the front of the group and begin the final push. Linhardt waited for the biggest blows dealt before he crept into the chamber, watching the Golden Deer and Byleth finish off the last of the soldiers. With a final dark threat directly into Linhardt’s brain, there was a flash of black smoke and the horse and rider at the center of the last room disappeared.

“Fuck!” Claude yelled. “We could have had him! We were so close!”

Byleth shook his head. “He’s too strong. We’re not ready for him.”

“Teach, I—”

Byleth took Claude by the shoulders and held him for a moment. “We’re not ready. We’ll _be_ ready.”

Claude took a deep breath and nodded, then loosened his grip on his bow. From the front of the room, they could hear the sound of metal again, but this time they were Knights of Seiros. Linhardt could cry from relief—it was over. He had an arrow in his shoulder but he had survived and no one had died and it was _over_. He pressed himself against the corner of the last chamber where they had been fighting, letting the Golden Deer leave, all of them talking over each other as loudly as humanly possible. 

Ignatz stopped in front of Linhardt and examined his shoulder without touching. “It isn’t lodged that deep. You’re lucky they’re all terrible shots.”

“So are you,” Linhardt replied. He wasn’t sure where that comment had come from, but he let Ignatz give him a sad-and-sour look before he left, following his classmates. 

A quiet voice asked, “Do you need anything else healed? Besides the shoulder?”

“No, Marianne, I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure? You seem to be limping a little. Is it your ankle?”

“It... might be? I didn’t wear my most resilient boots for this. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

Marianne finished her healing and crouched down a little to look closer. “Ah. They’re riding boots, ironically. Who bought these for you? We’ll find you different boots.”

“Riding boots?” Linhardt asked. “Ugh. Do you want them?”

She smiled a little. “I don’t think we’re the same size, but thank you.”

Linhardt nodded and followed her out of the chamber. Some curiosity burned in him, and burned enough that he asked, “How does your Crest help your healing?”

“What? Why would you ask that? Who told you I had a Crest?”

“Well, everyone knows,” Linhardt said. “It’s just common knowledge, who does and doesn’t have a Crest. So what does yours do?”

“None of your _business_ ,” Marianne replied. She rushed ahead to the rest of the group, looking around to see if there was anyone to talk to, but then she chose to lower her head and walk on in silence. Linhardt frowned but followed them all out of the chamber, wondering if he would have enough time and energy today to develop some new hypotheses based on the Crest work he had seen with this new group. 

Linhardt found he was fascinated by Byleth’s work in particular, such as when the professor cut down a soldier in one brilliant blast of power. The death was horrible, but the force from Byleth’s body had captivated him. Linhardt was around swords all day and every day since he had arrived at Garreg Mach, but no one used a sword like Byleth and the way it flowed with the movement of his body. Why did something so incredible have to end in blood? How could Byleth perform this amazing work with his body and use it to end lives?

As if Linhardt had summoned him with his brain, Byleth appeared at his side as they climbed the stairs back to the monastery. “Thank you for your help today. Are you all right?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t I be?” 

Byleth raised his eyebrows and touched his own shoulder. Linhardt accidentally bumped his shoulder against the wall and the screaming pain was back. 

“Ah, right. It’s okay. I should… I don’t want to numb it too much in case it makes the arrow more difficult to get out.”

“I’ll come with you to the infirmary,” Byleth said. “And I’ll explain to your professor what happened. It should get you out of swordwork for at least a few days.”

“Ha! I’ve skipped my swordwork for the past week. No need to worry about me.”

They found themselves outside. The Golden Deer yelled, not so much over the many many murders they had just committed but that they were outside in the fresh air again. Even Linhardt had to admit the bright _clean_ and _fresh_ of being outside wasn’t as repulsive as usual. 

“It wouldn’t hurt to have a backup,” Byleth said.

“A what?”

“Your magic is finite,” Byleth said. “In a battle, I mean. I’ve seen other mages, much more advanced ones when I was a mercenary, who would be at the end of their thread in a battle. Magic all but gone, healing and defensive. If only they had a sword or something to pick up at that moment and save themselves.”

“Do you think if a mage has run out of the energy to cast he suddenly has the energy to heft a sword and shield and finish off his enemies?” Linhardt asked. “I don’t need a sword. I won’t accept. A sword in my hand won’t help anyone.”

“You have a point. I forgot to think of magic that way. I’m not magical at all.” 

“It’s not magic, it’s _bodies_. You can’t swing a sword around for six hours straight and I can’t cast spells for six hours straight. Everyone needs rest.”

“They do,” Byleth said. “So you should get some.”

Linhardt nearly stopped in his tracks.

“You think I should sleep _more_ , Professor?” Linhardt asked with a little laugh. “No one would agree with you. I’m impressed you even thought to say that.”

Byleth did stop, turning to face Linhardt and place a hand in the center of Linhardt’s chest. He stopped Linhardt from walking and then dropped his hand to his side. “I didn’t say sleep, I said _rest_. Do you think you’re resting sufficiently at night when you’re nodding off in class every day? Do you think you’ve been getting enough rest when I find you slumped over a book in the dining hall, your food untouched?”

“I have food in my bag,” Linhardt protested. “Most of the time.”

“Get some _rest_ , Linhardt,” Byleth said. 

The two of them entered the staircase to the second floor and the infirmary. Linhardt lingered behind Byleth, trying not to bristle at the conversation, at the judgment on all his habits. Once they reached Professor Manuela, who was more than ready to look after all the Golden Deer and Linhardt’s shoulder wound, Linhardt didn’t have the energy to think of anything. 

“Look at this poor dear,” Manuela said somewhere over his head. “Fast asleep already. It _has_ been a long day, hasn’t?”

Linhardt thought that, somewhere, he should resent that comment, but wasn’t she right?

*

In the wretched days before the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, Byleth approached Linhardt with another baked pastry and a proposition. 

“Would you like to join my house? The Golden Deer, I mean.”

Linhardt took a huge bite of the pastry and said, “No, but thank you for this.”

“Oh,” Byleth said. “Can I ask why?”

Linhardt realized he hadn’t really heard or considered the question, just answered it reflexively. People here rarely asked him questions he should answer positively. 

“I don’t want to stir things up with my house,” Linhardt finally said. “And for all that I don’t particularly like our house’s professor as much as I _do_ like you, they do know quite a lot of healing magic and that’s what I want to focus on learning. You’re a sword… person. I don’t think we would have much to work on together.”

Byleth didn’t necessarily smile, but his cheek almost twitched. 

“But you do like me.”

Linhardt choked a little. “No—”

“It’s a joke,” Byleth said. “And I understand. I appreciate your reasoning.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s an open-ended offer,” Byleth said. 

“Thank you. Learn some more magic and maybe I’ll consider it.”

“I’m reviewing healing magic on Tuesday, actually. Come to that lecture and see if I can be of any help to you.”

Linhardt agreed and they went their separate ways. Tuesday, Linhardt repeated to himself. Tuesday, Tuesday, he would learn healing magic from Byleth on Tuesday. At the end of the day, Linhardt would find out how much care this mercenary had for human bodies. The thought was intriguing and a little exciting, and made Linhardt’s Sunday a little more enjoyable. 

Linhardt helpfully had a reminder on Tuesday to attend Byleth’s lectures when he was roused from his nap by a heavy knock on the door of his room. Linhardt slowly opened his eyes, then clutched his pillow in horror. “ _Fuck_ ,” he whispered.

He opened his door for Byleth and a stack of books. Linhardt rubbed at his eyes and looked around, trying to see his room for the first time as Byleth was seeing it.

Byleth only said, “Don’t miss the lectures.”

“It’s not that I want to miss the lectures. Drowsiness is my archnemesis.”

“Or: you’re not motivated enough.”

Linhardt scoffed. “I’m not motivated enough to care for useless things.”

“It was healing magic. I thought you would find it helpful.”

Linhardt had to change tracks. Byleth was one of the few people he didn’t hate speaking to at this place. He didn’t really care if he disappointed Byleth, but—

Okay, maybe he cared.

“Linhardt?”

Byleth was watching him. Linhardt felt rather pinned by the look. He didn’t know what to do or say. He wondered if Byleth did. Was there a right answer to this scenario? A wrong one? What would he lose if he didn’t succeed in this conversation?

“I won’t miss your next lecture,” Linhardt said. “I’m… intrigued now. I won’t miss it.”

“Intrigued?”

“I can’t make sense of you. You’re a mercenary, but you want to teach me healing magic. You’re not a commoner, but you’re certainly not a noble. I don’t know what to make of you.” _A mercenary. A murderer, at the very least, but was there really that much of a difference?_ “So much has happened since you arrived. I think you could be the villain behind all this, you know. The increase in bandits, kidnappings, suspicious activity at the village—”

Byleth’s eyes tightened slightly, his mouth a firmer line than before. “Is that what you think?”

“Just thinking aloud,” Linhardt said, because he had clearly said the wrong thing. “I didn’t mean any offense. Actually, I wanted to ask about your Crest, since of everything I know about you that certainly is the thing that intrigues me the most. You could teach me about that. I could join your house and focus my research on that.”

“Hm.”

“Not now,” Linhardt said. “Perhaps when I’m bored of one of my other research projects. We could find out all sorts of things about your Crest.”

Byleth didn’t respond. He gave a short little nod, then placed the lecture materials on Linhardt’s desk.

“Good night, Professor,” Linhardt called after him. 

He didn’t receive a response, which might have been a response all on its own. 

A few days later, Linhardt looked back on that conversation with some fondness in those brief moments during the Battle of the Eagle and Lion when he wasn’t absolutely terrified of being impaled by something. Damn, there were so many ways to be impaled during a battle. 

The Golden Deer had begun the battle at the south of the field, with the Black Eagles and Blue Lions across from each other. Linhardt spent as much of the battle as he could around Edelgard’s staircase pedestal thing from which she was throwing axes like that was a normal thing to do on a perfectly nice meadow. Shockingly, Linhardt and Hubert were working well together, with Hubert swiftly eliminating those who came near Linhardt and his casting. 

Caspar came to check on him every once in a while with his massive axe—he would chop someone down (temporarily, since it was a mock battle and their classmates were being hustled off the field once they sent a flare that they were “defeated”), keep someone off for a moment, then run back to check on the mages. 

“Over there,” Hubert yelled, a paladin on horseback coming towards them. Linhardt took some steps away and tried not to listen to whatever deeply realistic magic made this feel like an actual battle. Was it an actual battle? Was it real? Was any of this real?

There was a flash of _something_ that made Linhardt turn his head quickly, his hair whipping into his eyes and then sticking to his sweaty face. He and Hubert were now close to the ballista, which the Golden Deer had just claimed. Byleth, unlike the other professors, was on the field with his house “just to see what he could do.” It seemed deeply unfair to the students, but Linhardt could understand why the awful people who ran the monastery would want to see this mysterious mercenary in action and how good he actually was.

He was good. He was so _good_. They were no longer in a horrible underground labyrinth of murder. They were here on a beautiful meadow under the bright sunlight and Linhardt could see that Byleth’s sword work was _elegant_. His movements were powerful and clean as he helped clear the way for Lysithea and her magic that took out the people around them, one after another. Byleth took some steps, another charge at someone, and his blade seemed to glow electric, blue and purple and _lightning_ , as one more of Linhardt’s classmates disappeared from the field. 

Byleth turned his head just at that moment, right in Linhardt’s direction. Their eyes met and then Byleth’s eyes flicked just over Linhardt’s shoulder.

Ah, there was Lorenz and his javelin. Again. 

“Lin!” Caspar screamed. “This is why you need a horse!”

Linhardt rolled his eyes as hard as possible. At least he could have a rest now. 

*

“Professor,” Linhardt said in his most polite and professional voice. “Would the offer— _is_ the offer still open? To join your lectures and… and your house?”

Byleth still wasn’t the smiling type, but even as he nodded Linhardt could see a tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth. 

“Are you interested in swords yet?” Byleth asked.

“In using one? Absolutely not. But—” Linhardt vaguely motioned with his fingertips in Byleth’s general direction. “Whatever that was? Yes.”

Byleth nodded again. “We can work on that.”

It was settled, then, except for Linhardt, who suddenly felt deeply unsettled. 

“I don’t want you to think that I’m suddenly all right with killing people.”

Byleth watched him for a long moment. “Do you think I’m all right with killing people?”

“You did it for a living. Why wouldn’t you be?”

Byleth’s face fell. There was no other way of describing it, except that Byleth was enjoying their conversation, a thoughtful discussion of Linhardt’s learning and future, and then Linhardt just _happened_ to bring up the fact that Byleth had spent his entire life in the company of murderers and until very recently was one himself. How could that possibly shock Byleth?

Byleth was thinking over his words carefully. Linhardt, for reasons he couldn’t name or explain, shivered at the prospect of what he was about to hear. Perhaps an evil monologue on how killing was good, actually? Perhaps Byleth was the villain. Perhaps the twinge Linhardt felt in his body whenever he spoke to Byleth was the villainy. Perhaps the thing that drew Linhardt to Byleth was something dangerous, a terrible force that would turn the order of his whole world upside down and—

Actually, being the dutiful son of a noble house had done approximately fuck all in making him feel like a complete human being. Perhaps there could be a future for him in villainy. Were those bandits still hiring?

“I don’t know how you could have come to know me after some time, after coming into battle with me and my students, and think that I don’t value life. I was a mercenary. I haven’t forgotten that. I will never forget that, no matter the different paths my life will take from here on out.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You did, though,” Byleth said. “You did, and I hope that I can change your mind. I don’t mean that you should forgive me for the work I did; I don’t want anyone’s forgiveness. I don’t think you’re mature enough to understand the work I did.”

“I’m not mature enough to understand murder?”

“I don’t think you understand the work it takes to keep people alive,” Byleth said. “Have you ever lost everything? Your family, your people, your community? Your neighbors, your future?” Linhardt shook his head because of course he hadn’t, but Byleth barely paused for breath. “Your classmates have. How many of them are here because they have no choice? Because no one else cares for their families or communities, or their future? How many of them have come here to learn and do the dirty work of keeping their communities alive? How many of them look to each other in hopes of finding someone to help them with that dirty work, or at least someone who won't judge them for it?”

Linhardt had never heard Byleth speak so much at once, and Byleth looked shocked himself. Linhardt would have had a hard time believing that had Byleth not covered his mouth and turned away from Linhardt. Something had happened inside Byleth and Linhardt didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know his part in all of this.

“I want to help,” Linhardt said. He could hear his own voice, the way it sounded like an entreaty to Byleth. How had it come to this? Linhardt took a step closer and did it—he reached out and wrapped his hand around Byleth’s forearm. Byleth seemed to shiver, so Linhardt forced himself to hold Byleth tighter. Byleth closed his eyes tightly and breathed deeply. Linhardt found himself matching Byleth breath for breath, even slowing down in hopes that Byleth would follow. Eventually Byleth did, pulling himself together again into the firm, stoic professor who gently pried Linhardt’s fingers from his arm. 

He and Byleth looked down at Linhardt’s hand, resting carefully in Byleth’s cold hands. One of Byleth’s fingers traced the lines of Linhardt’s palm as Linhardt held his breath. Byleth closed Linhardt’s hand, gently folded his fingers closed, and let go. Linhardt didn’t know if his skin could forget the touch. 

“I’m sorry,” Byleth said. “It’s a subject that’s close to me. As you can see.”

Linhardt nodded. “I understand. I do. I understand what you mean, but I can’t do it. I can’t do what you do.” 

Byleth looked at him with an expression that was soft around the edges. He seemed like he wanted to reach out for Linhardt, too, like his words wouldn’t carry without touch. Linhardt glanced at Byleth’s hands and wondered if that could be true. He wondered if he could warm Byleth’s hands.

“I know you can’t do that. No one is asking you to become a mercenary, Linhardt.”

Linhardt frowned. He didn’t understand this conversation. He had simply stopped by Byleth’s quarters to ask if he could attend some lectures. Why did he feel like something had torn him open and revealed him to Byleth in a way that no one else had seen him? Why did he think Byleth felt the same?

In any case, Linhardt had to swallow a lump that had formed in his throat before he could answer Byleth’s question. “Aren’t they? Don’t people regularly ask me to put aside everything inside me to join my classmates and watch them take life? Or to play at the Battle of the Eagle and Lion and pretend to kill for our professors’ entertainment?”

“I know,” Byleth said. “But you have to believe that I want you to have what you want.”

“What is it that I want?” 

Byleth’s eyes looked so wide and hopeful. Linhardt hoped Byleth saw something in his eyes, too. Anything. Did Linhardt have anything for him? Why was Byleth _bothering_ with this conversation? Why was Linhardt?

When Byleth answered, Linhardt understood. He understood why he felt so raw, but why he couldn’t run away. He understood why he felt pinned under Byleth’s eyes: because he hoped Byleth could see him as no one else at this monastery, or in his entire _fucking_ life, had seen him. Whatever current had pulled him and Byleth together, he hoped it would let them swim somewhere clear and raise their heads above water, finally taking a breath. 

“You want to help people. You want to heal people. We will need that healing when the fighting is done.”

It was so painfully and brilliantly clear that Linhardt had to laugh. He laughed and, to his absolute shock, Byleth did, too. 

“I don’t want a sword, though,” Linhardt finally said.

“Then you won’t have one,” Byleth said. “But you _have_ to come to lectures and you _have_ to stay awake.”

“That’s a big ask.”

“I say it for your own benefit—not because I’ll be angry or disappointed, but because the Golden Deer are not the Black Eagles.”

“Well, I certainly hope not,” Linhardt said.

*

It took exactly one lecture for Linhardt to learn why no one slept through lectures with the Golden Deer. Linhardt slowly woke up in the classroom, a little surprised by the total silence. He opened one eye and saw Lysithea’s violet eyes staring directly at him. She smiled and said, “Good, you’re up.” 

Linhardt furrowed his eyebrows, then sat up and saw the entire Golden Deer house gathered around him, staring directly at him. Some of them were amused, some of them were annoyed—Claude, in particular, was perched on a chair, chin propped up, and smiling at Linhardt.

“What?” Linhardt asked.

“Nothing,” Claude said. “Just learning everything I can about you.”

Linhardt’s eyes narrowed. He reached up and felt his hair, just to see if they had done something ridiculous to him, but nothing in particular seemed to stand out. 

“Don’t worry,” Marianne said. “We didn’t touch you.”

Raphael wandered over from the other side of the room with a sandwich in his hand. “Yeah! You’re all right! But we’re gonna remember how much you care.”

Linhardt rolled his eyes, but sat up straight and opened his book.

Claude called out, “Teach! We can learn again!”

Linhardt arched his neck a little to see Byleth at the front of the room, wondering about his role in this ridiculous piece of performance art. All he saw was a man and his dark green hair, pen scratching across some paper. 

“All right, just a minute.” Byleth looked up and arched his own neck to catch Linhardt’s eyes at the back of the room. “I had the time to get through enough of these papers.”

“You could just let me sleep,” Linhardt said.

Claude laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, that’s not how this works. We don’t just _let_ things happen.”

Hilda’s shock of pink hair came into view around a pillar. She stared at Linhardt as she said, “Next time, pal, you sleep with one eye open.”

“All right, come on, let’s get back to it,” Byleth said. 

Perhaps he had made a mistake.

*

Just as Linhardt made his decision to switch houses, plague and monster season bloomed at Garreg Mach. 

“Are you sure you aren’t the villain causing all this?” Linhardt asked Byleth.

Byleth still didn’t smile, but something cracked across his face as he ran ahead to take down another soldier. Soldier? Who was _doing this_? Who had infected an entire village with some sickness and made the people turn against each other? Linhardt broke down walls with his magic and then turned to healing the people around him.

He tried it on one of the rampaging villagers to see if what they had could be cured with white magic. The gashes across their body healed, the bleeding stopped, and the villager stood up like everything was fine.

And then they swung their sword directly at Linhardt.

He cast a spell. He killed someone. It wasn’t the first time in that battle, but it had been such a long battle already. The black magic had taken something from him from somewhere deeper inside him. It hurt, deep in his gut he was hurting because he saved his own life by taking someone else’s. He couldn’t stand it. How could anyone stand it? How could the people around him ignore this feeling? Was he the only one? That wasn’t statistically possible. He couldn’t be the only one. 

Raphael screamed nearby. Linhardt took a breath and rushed to the edge of the action, catching Raphael after a particularly deep wound to his upper arm. 

“Thanks, pal,” Raphael said. He nodded, then ran a few feet and took out another person with a sword who had been aiming for Linhardt. “Check on the professor! He was having it out with someone who had an axe. He should leave them to me!”

“And _me_ ,” Hilda yelled as she blazed south towards Byleth, her own axe held tight to her body and ready to swing. 

“And her!” Raphael agreed. 

Linhardt ran as close to the front as he dared. Tomas, the librarian who loved to find Linhardt the most intriguing books in the library, had dropped the friendly monk cover and revealed himself as an evil wizard, which was what Linhardt's life and the monastery really needed. The calamity in the village was his doing; the villagers turning on each other and murdering their neighbors was the result of his experiments. The smartest man Linhardt knew had done this. The thought sickened him almost as much as the blood, _real blood_ , soaking into the meadow around him. 

He reached Byleth and extended a hand to one of the wounds at his leg. 

“No, the villager over there,” Byleth said, pointing to a far end of the meadow behind a broken wall. “They’ve been fighting someone off but they can’t last much longer. Go!”

Linhardt did as he was told. There were two villagers in that same area, one who was protected by Leonie on her horse with her bow and one who was totally unguarded. Linhardt took a breath and cast a spell at the maddened villager, whose body appeared to break internally and then fall still. Linhardt immediately moved to the other villager and cast another spell, making them healthy enough to run off. He could see in the distance where the surviving villagers were gathering, horrified at the fire everywhere, the blood—

Linhardt kneeled down behind the broken wall where the villager had been hiding, next to the corpse he had just made. He closed his eyes and he had to breathe through his mouth. Even then, he could smell blood and fire and crushed grass and trampled dirt. He could smell panic, pure horror and panic. He opened his eyes when the other villager, the one that Leonie saved, kneeled next to Linhardt and put his hands on Linhardt’s shoulders. 

“Come with me!” the villager yelled over the noise of the battle. “You can’t do anyone any good here!”

Something crumbled inside Linhardt, but then became strong again.

“I know,” Linhardt said. 

He hated himself. He wanted to give up. Why couldn’t he give up? Why couldn’t he stop caring? What was it inside him that insisted on running back into a battle to heal people only to watch them swing a weapon and take another life? Why couldn’t he leave this, all of this, and never think about it again? 

He took two deep breaths, then followed Leonie to the thick of the fighting again. Lorenz dismounted from his horse and Linhardt urged it away from the danger, then healed Lorenz. It was so much. It was all so _much_. 

Tomas, or Solon, or whatever that _asshole_ called himself, disappeared. The knights, as always, arrived for the cleanup if nothing else. More people arrived from the monastery to help the surviving villagers gather their precious few belongings and find shelter at Garreg Mach. 

In a daze Linhardt followed, but then he yelled: “Is anyone hurt? I’m a healer, I can help!”

People were hurt, so he helped. Marianne approached him slowly, but the two of them managed to combine their healing magic in a wave over the people in front of them, strangers and classmates alike. Once everyone was as physically healed as they could be, they all began the journey back to the monastery, one long caravan of students, soldiers, and the people who needed them. 

As they walked, Linhardt felt a heavy arm land across his shoulders and pull him close. He turned a little, knowing it was Byleth. 

“I’m so damn tired,” Byleth said. Linhardt laughed. Nothing was funny except that Byleth was still alive enough to stand next to Linhardt, wrap an arm around his shoulders, and gather enough breath to admit he was tired after the fighting they had just done. All the fighting that Byleth had done and he was just _tired_. It was the most that Linhardt had yet seen from him. Byleth was alive. He could feel some warmth radiating from Byleth’s heavy arm, from his chest pressed to Linhardt’s side. Byleth was so alive. 

“Tired? You? The—”

Linhardt was about to call him _The Ashen Demon_ (did all mercenaries have nicknames or just this one?) but then he realized Byleth did look ashen.

“You’re bleeding somewhere,” Linhardt whispered. “Come on, where are you hurt? Your lips are turning grey, you’re bleeding somewhere.” 

Linhardt found the gash in his leg, the dark dried blood disguising the gash with the color of his trousers. Linhardt cast his magic and Byleth let out a cry that rattled the people around them. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Byleth gasped. “That’s not good.”

“I know, I’m sorry, I did what I could but—”

Raphael swooped in and bodily picked up Byleth, helping him into Leonie’s arms and onto the front of her horse. She took herself out of the wave of people and rode ahead, calling out to Jeralt to let him know where she was absconding with his son. 

Linhardt looked back at Jeralt, former captain of the knights, the mysterious man who called himself Byleth’s father yet looked nothing like him. Not one single feature of Jeralt’s face was to be found in his son, except the long stare, the exacting way he dissected things with his eyes—

The careful way he looked at Linhardt, appraising him. Jeralt raised his eyebrow and smirked a little. Linhardt faced forward immediately, pushing his hair over one ear, making himself hustle a little so he could get back to the monastery and fucking rest. 

*

Despite healing magic from the much more competent Manuela, Byleth was still absent from their lectures for the rest of the week. The class ran drills as usual, hosted lectures for each other on what they were working on, and made up a schedule where they would pair up to visit Byleth in his quarters to entertain him. 

Linhardt participated in these activities. It was all a little bizarre, but—well. This was the bizarre house populated by a ragtag bunch that Linhardt couldn't begin to sort or categorize. Was he one of them now? Where did he fit in with Leonie, who was very nearly feral, and Hilda, who had made him an earring and then tried to pierce his ears because otherwise the earrings would be a waste of her time? What about Lorenz, who lectured Linhardt about his responsibilities to their "commoner" classmates and the moral health of their "commoner" professor? (Surely Byleth didn't know about _that_.)

Linhardt realized, during his presentation to the class, that he knew much, much more about Crests than any of them. 

“Crests are in your _blood_? Like floating around in there?” Raphael asked. “Okay, so say someone doesn’t have a Crest. Could you… add one? I’m sure you can’t or people wouldn’t be so wild about how rare they are, but—if it’s just blood! Why can’t they be—you know—implanted?” He looked around and caught Ignatz’s eye. Ignatz nodded at him and Raphael beamed at finding the right word. 

There was a fist bump for every occasion in the Golden Deer house. 

“I haven’t read about any instances where the person survived,” Linhardt said. “It involves infusing toxic amounts of magic into the blood, charging every last drop of it with this new, foreign substance that is meant to change your blood and your body forever. For the rest of your life. I haven’t read any accounts of someone surviving such a thing.” 

“Maybe if they already had a Crest,” Lysithea said. “Maybe that would help them survive.”

“Hey! Follow up question!” Raphael said, raising his hand. “So could you _remove_ one?”

“I don’t know,” Linhardt admitted. “Again: it’s such a deep change to someone’s blood—”

“Aw,” Raphael said. “Imagine a world without Crests! People could just be people, right?”

Murmurs rippled through the Golden Deer students. Ignatz and Marianne discussed if it was blasphemy—were Crests sacred to the Goddess? They were all taught that Crests were gifts from the Goddess, but did that make them vital to their faith?

Claude interrupted to say, “Has anyone wondered what’s on the rest of the map? Outside Fódlan? Do you think Crests exist there? Do you think anyone _cares_?”

He asked as though he knew the answer, which only increased the murmurs and discussions. Was Linhardt done? Could he retreat to his book and his pastry? He had visited Byleth earlier in the day as part of their visiting schedule and Byleth had a fresh pastry waiting for him. He swore to Linhardt he didn’t leave the room to get it, but he still wanted Linhardt to have it. 

Linhardt gathered his notes and looked subtly at Lysithea, who was listening to the conversation while looking so very, very tired. Linhardt thought about discussing it with Professor Hanneman and then sneaking a look into his records of student Crests to confirm his theory. It would explain her pointed question; it would explain why she could literally vaporize people on a battlefield but her actual body could withstand no physical injury. Linhardt was always running to heal her whenever she came close to any soldiers who might have the opportunity to retaliate after one of her attacks.

At the last battle, he found himself dispatching more and more offensive attacks to protect her because her spellwork did more to end the battle. If he could keep her alive, she could end it quicker. She and her magic were so deeply valuable to bringing every temporary peace. 

It made him sick. Not Lysithea, of course, but all of it. Every single moment. He couldn’t imagine what it did to Lysithea, to have these energy surges course through her body and, very likely, wear her out at double and triple the speed of the rest of them. He wondered if Crests could be removed from the body—if Lysithea could have her own body again. 

*

On their next free day, Linhardt had retreated to their classroom late in the evening to study and be alone. It was a cold night and, unlike his bedroom, their classroom had a fireplace. He was standing in front of the fireplace, allowing himself to warm his body enough to actually feel things when he heard quiet footsteps enter the room behind him. Linhardt turned around and smiled the best he could. 

“Professor, you’re looking better,” Linhardt said.

“Suddenly I’m a real professor,” Byleth said. “You look troubled. Are you thinking about the battle?”

Linhardt looked down at the floor, but then brought himself to look at Byleth. “One of the monks in my battalion finally died. I say finally because they were cursed by something, some poisoned weapon. I couldn’t help enough. The other monks couldn’t help enough. I think they suffered as they spent this past week dying. Poison does that.”

Petra had been hit with a poison weapon once. She spent days in agony as the poison made its way through her body. Professor Manuela and another healer infused her with magic several times a day to stop the poison from killing her. It worked, but Petra worked herself twice as hard after that to bring her back to where she was before and to make sure it never happened again.

“I know,” Byleth said. “I’m sorry. Do you want to do something for them? For the other monks?”

Linhardt tried to quell the thing in his chest, the one that wanted to scream and tear the entire monastery to the ground and take the rest of the continent with him. “Yes. Not for them, but I want— what do I have to do to make people value their own lives more? I hate taking life and I hate the sight of blood. How is victory worth it? Honor? Glory? How are any of those more important than life itself?”

“They’re not,” Byleth said. “I don’t think they are.”

“It frightens me that so many people seem to think so. I’m not suited for battle.”

“There are some fights you can’t run from.”

Linhardt felt his shoulders drop. He wrapped his arms around his middle, feeling a horrible stone in his gut and the disgusting resignation that he would have to get used to this feeling. Whatever warmth he had from the fireplace suddenly left him colder than ever. 

“Why do you do this for me?” Linhardt asked, more to himself than to Byleth. “You take the time to lead me and teach me every day. You listen to me and you seem to—" Linhardt dropped whatever he was going to say. Instead he said, "Could the reason be that you don’t want me to die on the battlefield?”

Byleth stepped closer and Linhardt dared to look up. He dropped his arms to the side and saw he was closer to Byleth’s face and his eyes than he had ever been before, closer even than when they were battling side by side and Linhardt could literally see the whites of his eyes as Byleth calculated his next move. 

“As long as I’m here,” Byleth said, as deliberate as he was in everything he did, “I won’t let you die.” 

The promise shook Linhardt to the core. He whispered, “That’s a bold statement.”

He took a step back, but—that didn’t help. Whatever spell had fallen on the room lingered still. “I want to believe you. You are a strange person and I think I _can_ believe you.”

It was a dark, cold night and Linhardt, an actual murderer after that last battle, had found one spot of light left inside his soul. If he didn't take it with both hands and protect it, it would disappear—but if he left it inside himself with all this darkness, it would die. The image forming in his brain was so bright and _he_ was so awful that he couldn’t live with it inside him anymore. It was so bare and real, so delicate and revealing, he couldn’t stand it.

But he could share it. 

“I want to ask something of you,” Linhardt said slowly. “I don’t want to kill. I don’t want blood on my hands. I just want to lie on my back and soak up the sun filtering down through the trees, and I want you to help me make that reality.”

He looked at Byleth again, Byleth whose eyes were wider than Linhardt had ever seen them. Linhardt swallowed the thickness in his throat and saw Byleth’s eyes move away from his face to Linhardt’s neck, his throat, the way it moved. Linhardt flexed his hands and let himself stand there. He would stand there and let Byleth see him for the coward he was. 

“I want to help you have that,” Byleth said.

Linhardt braced himself: _But…_

“I want that, too.”

Oh. 

Well. That was unexpected. 

*

Yes, there were evil mages and monsters and disappearing students, but it was also the month commemorating the founding of Garreg Mach 995 years ago. There was an annual ball to celebrate the day, which seemed ill-timed and ill-advised and generally in poor taste but, all things considered, par for the course at the monastery. 

A few days before the ball, Linhardt was leaving the marketplace when he was greeted by the talkative gatekeeper at the top of the stairs. 

“Good morning, Linhardt! Are you all ready for the Establishment Day ball and the Goddess Tower?”

“Good morning. What are you talking about?”

“Well, the ball—”

“The other thing.”

“Oh, the other thing!” the gatekeeper said happily. “Don’t you know the legend of the Goddess Tower?”

Linhardt sighed. “Of course there’s a legend. Let’s have it.”

“It’s a very special legend! It’s said that if a man and a woman share a vow at the Goddess Tower, they’ll be bound together forever.”

Linhardt raised his eyebrows. “A man and a woman? How does the tower know that?”

The gatekeeper appeared to blush a little beneath all that helmet. “Well, I suppose it could be anyone a young man wants to make a vow with. Two men could make a vow at the Goddess Tower.”

Linhardt raised his eyebrows and, from underneath his helmet, the gatekeeper gave him a puzzled look right back.

“You did… know that, didn’t you?” the gatekeeper asked. “That—well, that people can make vows to anyone they like. Or to no one at all. Two men could make a vow in the tower, if they wanted.” 

Linhardt was deep in thought, which the gatekeeper must have taken for confusion. The gatekeeper cleared his throat and said, “If you felt strongly about them. If you wanted to vow something with them.” 

Linhardt actually didn’t know that. Rather, he had never considered that he could… _want that_. He hadn’t thought to imagine such a thing: a place where he could meet a person (maybe someone he thought about quite often) and together they could both… make a vow with each other. It would come true. Someone would be his and he would be theirs. 

The thought was intoxicating. Someone would be his. He would be _theirs_. He would belong to someone. Someone would belong to him. 

“Is there someone you feel that way about, Linhardt?”

There was, and Linhardt—he knew it could never happen. He knew it would never happen.

But he was thinking about it anyway. 

*

What did one wear to the—ball. To the ball. The ball he was going to attend that evening. Claude made the rounds to everyone’s rooms to check in on their clothing choices, but really it just sounded like he was encouraging every non-choice Linhardt dithered over. 

“I don’t have anything terribly nice,” Linhardt said. “My father said monastery and I heard… I don’t know. Robes, sackcloth. I also don’t care about clothes, I think. It certainly seems from my dresser that I don’t care about clothes.”

“Yeah,” Claude said. “Not that kind of monastery, I guess. Except for Tomas. Fuck that guy.”

“Fuck that guy,” Linhardt agreed. 

“You gonna meet anyone special up there?” Claude asked, full of fake nonchalance. 

“Where? The tower?”

“Mmmmmm _hmm_ ,” Claude said. 

“I don’t know. Are you?”

“I don’t know, am I?” Claude stopped leaning against Linhardt’s desk and said, “By the way, this is not an invitation to the Goddess Tower, I just—”

“No, I wasn’t—I didn’t—”

“How does it even work,” Claude laughed. “A night full of mind readers? Maybe there’s a ticket system to get up there tonight. I don’t know how it works since _everyone_ knows about the Goddess Tower.”

Linhardt had and hadn’t considered that. How _embarrassing_ , to be caught at the foot of the Goddess Tower, as if he wanted to meet someone there.

As if he had any chance of meeting someone there. 

“This cape thing,” Claude said suddenly, pulling out of one of the dresser drawers a dark green short cape that Linhardt didn’t remember packing but, of course, his mother must have slipped into his belongings. “And your darkest everything else to really make the green of the cape and your hair _pop_ , you know?”

“Okay,” Linhardt said. “Yes. Okay. Thank you.”

Claude nodded decisively and made to leave, but he paused.

“It’s gonna happen, okay?”

Linhardt swallowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Claude looked at him. “It won’t happen if you don’t even try. So try, okay? Notch that arrow. Give it a tug—”

“All right, I get it, thank you,” Linhardt said, Claude’s laughter echoing around him as he left and Linhardt shut the door behind him.

The ball itself was an interesting time. People drank and had fun, people _danced_ —

Byleth danced. 

From Caspar’s side, Linhardt watched Claude dip into the crowd and reach for one particular hand, smirking as he led out onto the floor a man dressed in his blackest blacks. Claude could dance and Byleth could follow. Oh, Claude. 

Linhardt’s heart nearly fell out of his body when Claude caught his eye and winked. Caught _Linhardt’s_ eye and winked, then turned his full attention back to leading Byleth carefully around the dance floor. 

As they turned, Byleth couldn’t help but look over Claude’s shoulder, probably to see who he had winked at, who Claude could possibly be interested in or signaling—

Yes, Linhardt was still staring. Yes, Linhardt saw Byleth looking at him. Yes, Linhardt looked back. 

Yes, Claude pulled at Byleth’s hands to keep him in step, then said something else that made Byleth—not laugh, exactly, but perhaps—

Blush? 

_Blush_. 

_Fuck_.

Linhardt was gone as the song ended and the dancers and the crowd clapped. He needed air. He suddenly needed air very badly. 

He wasn’t the only one strolling on the grounds of the monastery, but he was one of the few who strolled alone. His walk took him to the quiet and dark fishing pond, then he looped back in the direction of the ball before taking a detour—

Yes, exactly there. 

He was shocked to find the area around the tower open. There was no one even close to the vicinity. There was no one at the bottom of the staircase. Was this an ambush? He walked back and tried to see the top of the tower, but he couldn’t see anyone there. No light, no people, nothing.

Linhardt felt sick with nerves, but he took a deep breath and began the climb to the top of the tower.

At the top he was sweating, some of it from all the damned stairs but more from the nerves that still threatened to destroy his stomach. He leaned against one of the ledges, letting the faint evening breeze brush against his cheeks and cool his skin. It helped, it did, and then he heard steps pause on the landing behind him.

Linhardt took another breath.

“Professor, you’re late.”

There was a pause, and then—

“We didn’t have plans to meet.”

Oh, he could hear Byleth _smile_.

Linhardt clutched the stone ledge, then let go and turned around.

“True,” Linhardt said. “But a young man can hope to accidentally bump into someone. I’m glad to find I was right.”

Byleth didn’t seem to smile, but he did. His eyes didn’t seem to light up, but they did. 

Linhardt didn’t seem terrified, but he was.

“I’m glad to find I was right,” Linhardt repeated. “I wanted to ask you something…”

Byleth took a step forward, pulling at his gloves. The evening was cool, almost chilly, and here was Byleth taking off his black gloves and slipping them into his coat. It completely undid something in Linhardt, the sentence in his mouth falling apart as his brain worked furiously to piece it together again.

“...if I could research your Crest.”

Byleth raised his eyebrows at him.

“Not right now,” Byleth said.

“But eventually?” Linhardt cleared his throat and took a step back to find that breeze again, the one that cooled his skin and let him breathe. “Let’s name the time and place, right now.”

“Linhardt.”

“What? Haven’t you heard the legend of this place? The story goes that if two people make a vow to each other here, they’ll be bound together forever.”

“Tell me more.”

Linhardt looked at Byleth and pushed his hair over one ear. “Let’s agree to meet here again one day. Just the two of us.” Linhardt wondered why he had said that when he was deeply, desperately aware that at that moment it was just the two of them. 

Byleth seemed to smile as he asked: “And you can research my Crest?”

Linhardt couldn't help but laugh at him, and himself, and everything. “Yes. Yes, let me research it to my heart’s content. Let me—”

Linhardt stood there for a moment and reached out a hand, a _shaking_ hand that Byleth caught, lacing their fingers together. Byleth would know now that his hands were nervous and clammy, that—

So were Byleth’s. Linhardt looked down, now both his hands joined with both of Byleth’s, their fingers laced together. Linhardt _laughed_. _Again_.

“I haven’t done this before,” Byleth said, a whisper between them. “I never thought—”

Linhardt looked up so quickly that he almost bumped heads with Byleth. “Yes! I mean, no. I mean yes! I never thought of it either. I never thought I would want to with—with anyone, really—but then.”

Byleth nodded slowly. “But then.”

Linhardt pulled their joined hands closer, bringing Byleth’s arms to wrap around his waist before Linhardt leaned in and kissed him. The kiss was brief, Linhardt meant it to be brief, but neither of them moved away.

Then neither of them wanted to stop. Linhardt wrapped one arm around Byleth, Linhardt's other hand reaching for his hair, pulling Byleth in deeper, his tongue tracing across Byleth’s lips and licking into his mouth. Had Linhardt ever felt someone this much? Of course he hadn’t, but had he ever felt _so much_? 

Byleth clutched at him harder, pulling him in closer, and Linhardt laughed, breaking their kiss. They rested their foreheads against each other, sharing their breath and their laughter as they kissed again. Linhardt wanted to laugh and grin for the rest of his life, but that would mean they had to stop kissing and that was completely unacceptable. 

“I think it’s magic,” Linhardt said, interrupting the kiss again. “I think—the tower—”

“Of course it’s magic,” Byleth said, stopping Linhardt’s mouth with another kiss. 

Linhardt stepped back so he found himself against the wall of the tower, Byleth following. He couldn’t begin to process or explain this, _all of this_ , the way Byleth’s body felt pressed against him, the way his own body wanted to pull Byleth inside and feel every part of Byleth in every part of him. Byleth’s hand traveled to Linhardt’s hip and pulled him in closer, the two of them gasping at the contact between them, the heat and the friction, a shock of something pure and electric lighting them both up. 

“Can I?” Byleth asked, one of his fingers tugging at the waistband of his trousers, slowly opening them because Linhardt could only stare at the space between them and breathe heavily. 

“Yes, if I can—”

They slowly untucked each other’s shirts and tunics, laughed to themselves at the layers and snaps and buttons and everything getting in the _way_ until Byleth’s fingers wrapped around Linhardt, his thumb grazing over the tip of Linhardt’s cock, slow and deliberate in the way he did everything. Linhardt looked down at Byleth’s hand moving between them, watching himself grow harder and listening to himself gasp and whimper with every touch. 

“I can’t be quiet,” Linhardt said. “I—it feels too good.”

Byleth’s other hand curved around Linhardt’s hip and pulled their bodies closer together, Byleth’s cock brushing against Linhardt’s stomach and drawing a sharp gasp from him, too. 

“I like that you’re not quiet,” Byleth said. He experimented with holding both their cocks in one of his hands, urging himself harder against Linhardt’s hips, both of them in awe at these new feelings. 

Byleth kissed Linhardt again as he urged his hips forward. “I like that you’re _never_ quiet,” Byleth added as Linhardt let another cry escape against Byleth’s mouth. 

“Desperately unfair,” Linhardt said. He composed himself enough to look down (he was finding that he did love to _look_ ) and reach between them, his hand taking Byleth’s cock and his thumb stroking the underside, making sure to take his time and feel Byleth move on him, push against him. Byleth leaned in and rested his forehead against Linhardt’s shoulder, then turned his head to press a kiss and a _bite_ against Linhardt’s neck.

“Unfair, again,” Linhardt said. All the same, he bared his neck to the side so Byleth could kiss him there and bite him again. It made Linhardt feel helpless and _open_ , and wasn’t that a thought. He spread his legs further and urged Byleth to give him more, push him harder against the wall of the tower. Linhardt wanted to feel that there was no more to give, that he and Byleth were moving against each other feverishly and giving it to each other as hard as they could. Linhardt wanted to feel it in the morning: the press of the cold wall against his back, the rough scratching of his coat and coattails against his back and the stone wall, the way Byleth’s hands held his hips firmly in place as they moved against each other, their cocks hard and rubbing against each other. All Linhardt wanted now was something _inside_ him.

“Could you,” Linhardt asked, lifting his hands to grip Byleth’s waist and still them both. “Could you—your fingers—just get them inside me, _please_.”

Byleth looked shocked, hopefully not at the thought of fingerfucking in general but that Linhardt might want it. Linhardt nodded and leaned in, pressing his forehead to Byleth’s cheek. “I want it so much. Please. _Please_.”

Byleth didn’t need to be told twice. Linhardt watched him reach between them and slick his fingers with their precome; it would have to do for now. Linhardt spread his legs further, ignoring his brain screaming about the mutual horniness and stupidity that had them fucking in a very public tower rather than one of their large, warm beds. 

The thought of being seen only made him spread himself further and eagerly tip his hips forward, Byleth’s fingers gently circling his opening before slipping two fingers inside and pushing _deep_ into Linhardt. Byleth did not tease and Linhardt did nothing to muffle his cry as Byleth thrust inside him. Linhardt knew he must look absolutely shameless, his hair sticking to his face as he fucked himself on Byleth’s fingers.

Linhardt realized he had closed his eyes at some point; when he opened them again, he felt so overwhelmed at the scene in front of him, on him, _inside him_ , and Byleth. This was Byleth eagerly fucking into him, pressing Linhardt against the wall. Just as Linhardt managed to say that he was close, Byleth wrapped an arm around Linhardt and _stopped_. Before Linhardt could voice his outrage, Byleth pulled Linhardt in for a kiss, something sweet and lingering against Linhardt’s lips. Byleth gently tugged at Linhardt’s bottom lip and kissed him again, the two of them catching their breath for a moment. 

“I almost forgot why I was here,” Byleth said. Linhardt pulled away slightly, saw Byleth’s eyes were closed, and leaned in to press a kiss against Byleth’s jawline. He could let Byleth have this. At this rate, he would let Byleth have just about anything.

“I wanted a breath of cool air during the ball,” Linhardt said. Both of them laughed and Linhardt kissed Byleth’s neck again, the spot beneath his ear, his lips lingering on the pulse point. “How about you?”

“I don’t know,” Byleth said quietly. “I only knew that I was thinking about someone, the way I felt about someone. I wanted to know if they could feel that way, too.”

“I feel a lot of things right now,” Linhardt said. The two of them snickered, muffling their laughter the way they had absolutely not quieted their cries and gasps only moments ago. Linhardt felt Byleth’s fingers leave him, both his hands instead gripping his hips tight. He felt empty and sad, except Byleth urged his hips against Linhardt again, as if Linhardt had been worried Byleth forgot what they were doing. 

What they _would_ be doing. Could Linhardt make a vow, there, that they would never stop doing this? Perhaps expand their territory of the Goddess Tower to other parts of the monastery and Fódlan, like their beds? Like every bed in every village and city across the continent? Against library walls and tables, in forest clearings and abandoned meadows, on a blanket laid out on the grass next to a pond or a river, the water rushing past them and urging them on in their fucking? Could they vow to have each other as often as possible, for as long as they could imagine?

“It’s not just this,” Byleth said, as if he was reading Linhardt’s mind. Well, more likely, he was reading the way Linhardt canted his hips forward again, wanting desperately to finish and move this to a _bed_ because the only way the night could end perfectly was with the deepest, most perfect sleep of his entire life. “I’ve felt drawn to you for so long.”

Linhardt lifted his head, his nose brushing against Byleth’s cheek, urging him to open his eyes so they could look at each other. Byleth seemed to take a breath and finally open his eyes again, looking deep into Linhardt’s. 

“So have I,” Linhardt said. “I don’t know what it could be, but I felt it, too.” 

Byleth—there, he did it, he smiled, openly and perfectly. He had _dimples_ at the corners of his mouth. No one would believe Linhardt unless they saw Byleth like this, which Linhardt hoped no one ever would. 

“Even when I scolded you about your horseback riding lessons?”

Linhardt nodded, too eager. “Especially then. Imagine being the only person who didn’t want me on a horse.”

Linhardt felt Byleth’s fingers again, gently taking them both in hand again. “But you ride so well.”

Linhardt lowered his eyes so he could shake with laughter and writhe under Byleth's touch. “Please make me come so I can leave and never speak to you again because of that joke.”

“How was that a joke? You—”

Linhardt forcefully pulled Byleth close again, his hand joining Byleth’s hand again to get each other off. Their cocks were hard and wet as if they had never stopped. Soon they were rocking against each other again in earnest, imperative they come as quickly as possible. Linhardt felt the heat of Byleth’s sword-calloused grip, his movements careful but not gentle as he brought Linhardt to the edge. He tried to warn Byleth, but what could he say? Linhardt could only cry out, sharp and sudden as he shuddered and heat spilled between them. Linhardt pulled Byleth in, wrapping his arms around Byleth’s chest and resting his head against his shoulder. 

“I’ll just—in a second—”

“Linhardt, if you fall asleep—”

He only needed to rest against Byleth’s shoulder for a moment, catch his breath, and remind himself that Byleth had fucked him in the Goddess Tower. Byleth’s cock was waiting for him and only him. Linhardt stood up straighter (as straight as he could with Byleth between his legs) and smiled at Byleth as he slipped his hand between them, eagerly taking Byleth in hand again and watching every expression on Byleth’s face. Linhardt watched as his eyes slowly closed, he bit his lip, his arms now bracketing Linhardt on either side like Linhardt wasn’t going to leave until Byleth was done with him. 

He sure fucking hoped so. 

Byleth didn’t warn Linhardt either, except to lean in and kiss Linhardt again, fucking his tongue into Linhardt’s mouth as he came over Linhardt’s hand and onto his stomach, ruining the formal evening clothes long rumpled and fucked up beyond use. Byleth pulled away and gasped, his mouth looking so wonderful that Linhardt pulled him in for another kiss. He hoped Byleth could feel that it was a promise, that this wasn’t the last time this would happen between them.

“Tomorrow,” Byleth whispered against his mouth. Linhardt grinned, he was so happy.

“No, I’ve canceled tomorrow,” Linhardt laughed, chasing kisses that Byleth was more than happy to surrender.

“Tomorrow, we investigate that chapel,” Byleth said. “We find nothing, or we find something and handle it easily, because good things happen to us—”

“Yes, I agree with everything you’re saying.”

“And then…”

“Only _and then_ ’s from here on out,” Linhardt said. “And _Yes_ , and _I will_ , and _I want_ , and _Let me_ , and—” Linhardt kissed him again and pulled him in closer, the mess between them completely gross but completely wonderful. It was everything he wanted every day and night for the rest of his life, to be this disgusting on every level of being. How could he ever sleep again except like this, wrapped up in this man, completely spent and ready to sleep—

Ready to _rest_ , oh he was going to rest so fucking hard for the rest of his life and he would take Byleth with him and they would become absolute champions at resting like this. 

“It’s a promise,” Byleth said. “It’s a vow, even.” 

“If you wait five years to collect—”

“No, never.”

Linhardt lifted a hand to cup Byleth’s cheek, his thumb stroking his cheekbone. Byleth let his eyes flutter closed at the touch, then kissed Linhardt’s palm and opened his eyes again. Linhardt kissed him once more, a long kiss so they could go their separate ways for tonight. Tonight they would sleep and they would get through tomorrow. They would find each other again and have each other again, just like this and in a thousand other ways—

“It’s a promise,” Linhardt said in the space between them. “It’s going to happen. We’ll make it so.” 

Byleth nodded eagerly and kissed him again. “We will.” 

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/screamlet)


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